Looking back over the last few days at the events surrounding Tareq and Michaele Salahi — the Virginian couple who crashed last week’s White House state dinner — it’s hard not to wonder whether we haven’t just witnessed the invention of some brand new type of reality game show: extreme reality. Unlike Balloon Boy all signs point to the Salahis wanting to be caught. Now they get to tell their story to the Secret Service.

The latest development in the saga of the polo-playing, dove-throwing socialites who crashed the first state dinner of the Obama administration is something that we suggested yesterday: Michaele and Tareq Salahi may have had help from the inside.

How does a pair of socialite reality-show wannabes crash their way into the most exclusive event in the nation — in the same room as senators, celebrities, and the President? Tareq and Michaele Salahi somehow managed to brazen their way past the Secret Service and into the White House without a hitch, leaving the news to break on their Facebook page. How did they do it?

It wasn’t a “booty call” like when Anderson Cooper called in last week, but Rep. Barney Frank was a guest on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live last night.

And while he talked about Sen. Ted Kennedy‘s passing, the majority of the time was spent dishing on The Real Houswives and similarly lighter fare.

Anderson Cooper called in to Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live last night (which we’ve written about before).

It was part of the regular segment “Midnight Booty Call” – in which host Andy Cohen throws out funny questions and talks about Bravo programming. Cooper is a well-known Real Housewives of Atlanta fan, so he had a lot to talk about.

It’s downright ballsy (tacky?) for a cable development exec to give himself a talk show on his own network, but Andy Cohen doesn’t mind one bit. His talk show, Watch What Happens, is just another ingredient in Bravo’s secret recipe — a line-up that’s equal parts despicable and magnetic (especially if you’re rich) — an advertiser’s dream come true.

During last night’s “Real Housewives of New Jersey” reunion special, it got real (well, more real than usual) when host Andy Cohen stepped in to express his personal opinion about one of the housewives’ husbands loose use of the term “gay” as an insult. “I’ll jump in, and I have no business jumping in, but I’m gay, and I thought it was offensive,” said Cohen. “I mean, I just want to say…I think it was offensive.” It may not be a coming out – but it’s noteworthy, considering the glass ceiling the exec/host is about to break.