Word: social
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Until her resignation last Friday—the fallout of the notorious party-crashing of a White House gala by Tareq and Michaele Salahi—she was President Obama’s White House social secretary—the nation’s highest-ranking party planner...
It’s not as if the position of social secretary boasts any historical import—Rogers’ predecessor Amy Zantzinger wasn’t exactly a household name, and comparable oblivion likely awaits Rogers’ successor, Julianna Smoot. Rogers may be the first black social secretary, but it’s probably safe to say that, with the election of the first black president, African American children can aspire to higher callings than arranging tea parties for the First Lady...
Givhan’s Post colleagues Anne Kornblut and Krissah Thompson, likewise, absurdly injected race into the Rogers saga by noting how “…some of those who admired Rogers as a trailblazer said they were sorry to see the first African American social secretary also become the first high-level departure from Obama’s senior staff...
Three things and three things alone differentiate Rogers from social secretaries past: her race, her chic, and her bungling of the Salahis affair. None of these three traits justify the grossly excessive media coverage that she has received, and this ailment, this risibly misguided belief that ethnicity and fashion sense can render even the White House social secretary relevant, plagued not only the Washington media establishment but also Rogers herself...
Almost from the minute she stepped foot into the West Wing, Rogers began posing for magazines like Vogue and the Wall Street Journal magazine, antics one can hardly envision the dourer Zantzinger or Smoot emulating. An inside source told Politico that at one point, Rogers wondered why, as social secretary, she did not have her own driver. Eventually, David Axelrod had to warn Rogers to stop parading around in expensive clothes and talking up the “Obama brand” in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression...