Valerie Jarratt, White House senior adviser, has a daughter who is getting married this weekend at a swanky 100-person celebration on Chicago’s south side. Everyone will be there: the President, the First Lady, their kids, Attorney General Eric Holder and a host of Chicago royalty, including well-to-do attorneys, publishers, bankers and businesspeople.
Everyone will be there except, of course, Valerie Jarratt’s lifelong best friend and former White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers, who, after a series of mishaps that included showing up the Michelle Obama and assigning herself her own table at White House state dinners, has been, strangely, left off the guest list.
Rogers, who saw her White House career careen into disarray for being “too glamorous” and promoting her version of “The Obama Brand” during President Barack Obama’s first year in office, has once again run into a sharp elbow. “Desiree is not going and has not been invited,” said a top Sneed source.
Sneed is told it was Valerie Jarrett who was given marching orders by Michelle to get Rogers to resign; White House strategist David Axelrod also wanted her gone.
It didn’t help Rogers’ cause to dress in boffo designer-wear in “The People’s House,” call the first lady “Michelle,” or assign herself her own table at a state dinner…
“Valerie and Desiree were once very close; Sunday dinner mates; part of a powerful clique of African-American Chicago women, which also included Johnson Publishing chairman Linda Johnson Rice,” said a top source familiar with the group. “Michelle Obama was not part of that elite Chicago clique.”
It probably also didn’t help Rogers’ cause that she was instrumental in the security breakdown that allowed attention whores Michaela and Tareq Salahi to waltz into a White House state dinner without an invitation, but with a Bravo camera crew waiting just outside the White House gates. Or that she was horrible at her job, allowing Barack Obama to do things like give the Queen of England, who doesn’t even listen to her own speeches, an iPod full of audio visual highlights from his stellar political career.
But I’m sure p*ssing off Michelle Obama definitely didn’t help matters very much. Word has it that, upon moving into the White House, Desiree was not willing to give up her fashionista ways and stole headlines for her Michigan Avenue shopping sprees and horrific failures. And there’s only room for one woman’s opulent lifestyle in these tender years. Otherwise the proletariat might get the wrong idea about who is in charge.
Of course, there’s always the party crashing option. I’m sure she knows plenty about that.
