It used to be that every time I heard a major story about something involving security and violence, I would cringe and pray, "Please God, don't let it be an Arab."

These days, they happen so often, I am more specific. "Please God, can it just be harmless stupidity and irresponsibility this time?"

This week, God answered my prayers when he served up to the front pages of America's anti-Arab news media Tareq and Michaele Salahi, socialites whose wealth is apparently measured in lawsuits, bankruptcy courts and lies.

The Salahis "crashed" a State Dinner hosted by President Barack Obama at the White House in reality TV fashion, which may in fact be their ultimate motive for attending the event for which they did not have an invitation.

This story is truly whacked out, for sure, which tells you that even God sometimes has a strange sense of humor.

There are many truly troubling issues involving the Salahis.

For example, Michaele Salahi reportedly claimed she was a "cheerleader" for the Washington Redskins. The Redskins said that is not true, which makes you wonder about a woman with a man's name who has to pretend she was a cheerleader to get ahead in the world.

So what's Tareq's excuse? He has those same boyish good looks of another well known American Arab, Major Malik Nadal Hassan.

According to the fanatic rightwing media which is having their usual field day distorting facts and telling tall tales, Salahi is tied to a "pro-Hamas organization." I expected details regarding al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but instead the extremist right identified the group as "The American Task Force on Palestine" (ATFP)

It's amazing how every time the word "Arab" comes up in anything of even remote concern, every American Arab, organization and idea gets blamed.

Tied to Hamas? Oh puh-leeze! The American Task Force on Palestine is one of the more moderate American Arab organizations in, well, America. And that's using the word "America" three times in the same sentence.

The ATFP are advocates not only of non-violence and peace based on compromise, but resolving the Middle East conflict between Palestinians and Israelis by, "Oh My Gosh!" endorsing the "two-state solution."

Still, that doesn't excuse the Salahis for hamming it up at the expenses of an already over-wrought American Arab community burdened by such negative images like the murder of the 13 American servicemen and women by Major Hasan at a hospital in Fort Hood, Texas. The memory of 19 Arabs and Muslims crashing - there is that frightening word - airplanes into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers and the Pentagon lingers in our minds.

The Salahis are basing their slim defense on a Pentagon official and friend who told the Salahis he couldn't get them tickets to the state dinner. But they went any way. And someone else argued that it's not the fault of the Salahis but the fault of the lapse in security around President Obama who has had a 400 percent increase in death threats over past presidents thanks to people like radio fanatic Rush Limbaugh telling his hate-rhetoric-drummed up audience of extremists that Obama has to go.

That's like arguing that you walked in to a candy store, saw a bowl of candy on the counter and took the candy without paying for it. And when you get caught, you blame it on the store for not having someone there to prevent the theft.

Is that what the rich do with their lives these days? Recklessly venture into the exposed national psyche stepping on our raw nerves in a post Sept. 11 world of stereotyping and profiling?

Isn't there something else we can spend our time arguing about, though? Like whether or not it was an affair that provoked a clash between a well known golf champion with his hundreds of millions in brand name sponsors and his sexy model wife. Was she chasing him down their home driveway with a gold club to help him escape his crashed car in the middle of the night, or is it that good old fashioned scorned woman thing?

Tiger Woods will probably dodge the bullet on his episode. But you know that it would have been and entirely different story had his middle name been "Hussein."

Editor's addition:

WATCH Jon Stewart's send-up of Tareq and Michaele Salahi's caper, below.

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