If it was attention they craved, Michaele and Tareq Salahi certainly should be satisfied with the stir that their unauthorized presence at last week’s White House state dinner has caused.

The full story on the gatecrashing incident apparently still is unfolding, but so far it reflects poorly on both the Salahis and the Secret Service personnel who allowed them into President Obama’s party honoring the visiting Indian prime minister.

The couple emotionally denied on television Tuesday that they had crashed the party, saying they had e-mails that proved they had been invited — no invitation, just e-mails. They described the publicity triggered by the event was “devastating” and lamented, “Our lives have really been destroyed.”

The Salahis’ devastation might be more believable if they had not been out within days of the event trying to sell their story to various television entities for hundreds of thousands of dollars. There’s also the couple’s history of financial trouble and at least one other report of them attending a high-profile event without an invitation. There’s also the fact that Mrs. Salahi had been hoping to land a part on an upcoming reality show. It’s not like these people are exactly publicity shy.

At the same time, what was going on at the Secret Service checkpoint that allowed the Salahis into the dinner? Several invited guests to the state dinner told the New York Times that the normal security check-in process was haphazard compared with that at other events they had attended at the White House. Some said that guards were glancing at identification cards but were stationed in a dark location and that guests were funneled through a portable metal detector but there was no X-ray scanner to screen their belongings.

It’s not exactly the kind of security one would expect at a high-profile government event in a nation that is leading the fight against global terrorism. The Secret Service should feel fortunate that the only uninvited guests who crashed this party were a couple of apparent publicity hounds.

Any way you look at it, this situation should be a wake-up call. It’s disturbing that our publicity crazed society inspires people to crash state dinners or falsely report their son is missing and may be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon saucer. However, the fact that the security measures at the White House dinner weren’t stringent enough to screen out some uninvited guests, no matter how innocent, also is cause for concern.

The Salahis shouldn’t be hailed as heroes, but they may have done the nation a favor by shining a light on lax security standards at the dinner. Hopefully, that spotlight will result in increased security vigilance that will screen out people like the Salahis and others with much more sinister objectives.