Making an unusual appearance in the Sunday Styles section, Washington reporter Jackie Calmes introduced the world to Julianna Smoot, the new White House social secretary replacing Obama confidante Desiree Rogers, who is resigning after a reality show couple crashed a White House state dinner in November.
While wooing Smoot, the former Obama fundraiser, in "Why the Rainmaker Is Now the Gatekeeper [1]," Calmes also used a throwaway line to suggest Rogers's reputation had been unfairly marred, pointing to the "more than 300 other events" Rogers organized that were evidently free of gatecrashers.
(Would the Times give the benefit of the doubt to Toyota by citing all the Toyotas that don't have brake problems?)
You probably won't be finding Julianna Smoot wearing Comme des Garçons, showing up at New York Fashion Week or posing for Vogue and Vanity Fair. And at least for now, you won't find her posing or doing interviews at all.
That's because Ms. Smoot - a Democratic fund-raiser who was once called the $75 million woman and who went on to drum up 10 times that amount for Barack Obama - will soon assume her new job as White House social secretary practically as the anti-Desirée Rogers, who did all those things.
Ms. Rogers, of course, is the high-profile Obama confidante who recently announced that she would step down as social secretary three months after an uninvited couple crashed the Obamas' first state dinner, igniting a furor that overshadowed her work on more than 300 other events.