The change in the White House began as soon as Obama won the presidential election in November 2008, the first African American to do so. Soon, close friend and campaign advisor Rogers would be pegged as the first African American social secretary, a woman who handled the social scene inside the White House, including coordinating state dinners, musical performances, Easter Egg rolls and youth visits.
Rogers brought a variety of events to the White House, organizing a luau for members of Congress, poetry jams and all-star jazz performances and hosting celebrity visitors who had never been inside the White House. But Rogers also kept a higher profile than past social secretaries, posing for a spread in Vogue and in WSJ, the Wall Street Journal‘s magazine, bedecked in exorbitantly expensive garments, and sitting in the front row during New York Fashion Week.
Rogers insinuated that, along with the president and first lady, she made the White House a cool and hip place to visit, even though the Obamas do not host as many state dinners as the previous administration. But the people’s house has undergone changes that will never be undone.
“The White House will never be the same again,” Rogers added.
The Harvard-educated Rogers said she is not having a one-woman pity party over her “forced” resignation from such a high-profile position. She was never able to recover after her role in the national security breach when fame-craving Virginians, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, crashed the Secret Service gates and got close enough to shake President Obama’s hand inside the White House. A check revealed that a third man also gained access that night. Barack Obama privately fumed.
“I will be fine,” Rogers said at a luncheon in Chicago for the Chicago Advertising Federation at the Hilton on April 29. “I’m not crying for me.”
“If the worst thing that happened to me is, you know, someone said I was beautiful and I had on the wrong dress, and I should have had a clipboard, you know, OK,” she said.
“I’m comfortable with the work we did.” –terry shropshire
