Okay, it’s been 18-1/2 months, and with I believe only one exception (and that was primarily a media critique), I’ve gritted my teeth long enough about the First Family’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous routine.
To a point, what they do on their personal time is their business, and even if they overspend on the taxpayers’ dime, the amount of money involved isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things. I’ll even allow that giving your kids an opportunity to see a lot of the world is a permissible presidential perk.
But the elitist act of the Obamas has long since become insufferable, and the hypocritical example they’re setting — demanding “sacrifice” while ostentatiously livin’ large — has crossed into the outrageous.
Michelle Obama has just taken the royalty act to new heights. Andrea Tantaros at the New York Daily News delivers a concise critique:
Material girl Michelle Obama is a modern-day Marie Antoinette on a glitzy Spanish vacation
Sacrifice is something that many Americans are becoming all too familiar with during this economic downturn. It was a key theme in President Obama’s inaugural address to the nation, and he’s referenced it numerous times when lecturing the country on how to get back on its feet.
But while most of the country is pinching pennies and downsizing summer sojourns – or forgoing them altogether – the Obamas don’t seem to be heeding their own advice. While many of us are struggling, the First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her “closest friends.” According to CNN, the group is expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort. Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times.
… Estimated room rate per night? Up to a staggering $2,500.
… The Obama modus operandi is becoming clear. … their idea of austerity is really just the lap of luxury, at least for ordinary folks.
Incredibly, the Obamas have long portrayed themselves as precisely such commoners.
… Instead, Michelle Obama seems more like a modern-day Marie Antoinette – the French queen who spent extravagantly on clothes and jewels without a thought for her subjects’ plight – than an average mother of two.
… I don’t begrudge anyone rest and relaxation when they work hard. We all need downtime – the First Family included. It’s the extravagance of Michelle Obama’s trip and glitzy destination contrasted with President Obama’s demonization of the rich that smacks of hypocrisy and perpetuates a disconnect between the country and its leaders.
… In January, President Obama insisted that “everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good. Everybody is going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game.”
If sacrifice is the precursor to change, what will the family that ran on change offer up? Elitist doublespeak won’t cut it.
Read the whole thing.
I’m trying to recall any even remotely equivalent or extravagant vacation instance involving Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, Pat Nixon, Lady Bird Johnson, or even Jackie Kennedy. I can’t. Can anyone else? Several of those first families also were raising a child or children while their father was the nation’s commander in chief.
I also worry that what we are really witnessing is how people who can get away with it act when they know a collapse is coming (another example relating to Nancy Pelosi is here). That is, have fun and spend wildly while you can, because a few years from now all of this will be a distant memory. I hope I’m wrong.
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