Michelle Obama ate roasted sea bass!

THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2013

Clear proof that the Times is mad: At the New York Times, the news division is officially angry at Obama, presumably because he doesn’t respect the press. (What else do these hacks care about?)

You can tell the Times is mad from the highlighted text in this thoroughly woeful report:
SHEAR AND BAKER (5/30/13): Perhaps it is nothing more than an accident of timing that as federal workers brace for a summer filled with unpaid furlough days, their leaders are traveling the nation and globe on trips that exude luxury.

On Wednesday, President Obama left the White House for two Chicago fund-raisers in the hope of helping Democrats retake the House in next year’s elections. The cost of flying aboard Air Force One to his hometown: $180,000 per hour.

The same day, Michelle Obama traveled to Massachusetts to lunch with rich donors who had paid up to $37,600 per ticket at the Taj Boston Hotel. The meal included roasted Chilean sea bass with a fricassee of asparagus.
Trust us: When they start printing the snooty-sounding menus, it means that they are trying to harm the politician in question.

Politicians constantly appear at dinners with snooty-sounding menus. When reporters cut-and-paste those menus, it means that the pol is a target. (For other examples, see below.)

Shear and Baker tend to be hacks, especially Baker. But the children are so angry at Naughty Obama now that they even stooped to this:
SHEAR AND BAKER: Almost by definition, Mr. Obama lives a life foreign to most Americans, with the big white house and the ushers and chefs and the airplane fueled and ready to go. When he wants a weekend away, he can fly to Florida to golf with Tiger Woods. When his daughters take spring break, they head to Aspen to ski. He winters in Hawaii and summers on Martha’s Vineyard.
When they stoop to the point of sliming the daughters, you know the Times is mad.

(How dare those ratty kids go on spring break? Who do those kids think they are?)

Watching the way these stumblebums work is truly an education. Long ago, Aristotle declared that we humans are “the rational animal.” When Shear and Baker start sliming the daughters and printing the menus, we can see that his judgment was wrong.

In their final paragraph, Shear and Baker finally quote a Republican who admits that attacks of this kind are really a big pile of bullshit. That said, when the Shears and the Bakers start printing this crap, you know that the children are mad.

When Candidate Gore dined on quail: In March of 2000, Candidate Gore offered to eschew "soft money" if Candidate Bush would do the same. But Candidate Bush rejected the offer, and Gore was now out raising funds.

At the New York Times, this of course meant that Candidate Gore was a hypocrite. As part of the punishment, Katharine Seelye and her posse began to publish the fancy menus from Gore’s fund-raising events.

Bush was attending swish dinners too, but his events were closed to the press corps. At the Times, that fact was published just once.

The children kept printing the fancy menus from Gore’s outrageously fancy meals, without noting that they had been barred from Bush’s fancier soirees. And alas! When they didn’t print the menus from Gore’s events, they described the Miros and Chagalls on the walls.

Seelye rarely failed to signal that Gore was really all about money, just like the crooked Bill Clinton before him. Pathetically, this was her opening paragraph from one of Gore's fund-raisers:
SEEELYE (4/17/00): The sweet scent of jasmine wafted up the leafy hillsides, the lights of Los Angeles twinkled below, and the cash register ca-CHINGed until it was stuffed with $2.8 million.
Gore’s fund-raising dinners were repeatedly mentioned; Bush’s events were disappeared. What follows is the only occasion when intrepid reporter Frank Bruni discussed a Bush dinner in any detail.

To state the obvious, Bruni’s tone differed vastly from Seelye’s:
BRUNI (6/20/99): At a dinner tonight at the home of John T. Chambers, the chief executive of Cisco Systems, Mr. Bush collected what campaign officials estimated to be more than $3.5 million from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs..."I don’t relish these big fund-raising events," Mr. Bush said beforehand, as his campaign plane flew west from Austin, Tex. But he was set to grin and bear several of them in a campaign week expected to be among his most lucrative.
Poor Bush! According to Bruni, the great man had to grin and bear it as he raised twice as much money as Gore. For his part, Gore was dining on “quail stuffed with squash” (among various treats) as the registers went ca-CHING in the night.

Yes, this is the way our human race actually works. For a fuller account of this heartbreaking nonsense—heartbreaking nonsense which changed the world’s history—see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/20/02.

Folk have been doing the same thing to Rice. Lawrence and Rachel won’t tell you.

12 comments:

  1. I think it's appropriate for the media to focus on the lavish lifestyle of the Presidents and their families. America was founded as a place where the President was an ordinary person, unlike the kings and emperors who ruled other countries at that time. Over the years, it has become accepted that a President and his family can live like royalty, with all costs picked up by the taxpayer. Or, put another way, every dollar spent to support their lavish lifestyle means that much less available for the poor, for education, for health care, etc.

    BTW my impression is that Obama spends more than George W. Bush on personal and family expenses. I don't know if such a comparison is available.

    Another pet peeve of mine is when Presidents or Veeps charge the public for trips that are almost entirely campaign fund-raisers. In addition, they often use large amounts of local services for such trips and sometime mess up local commutes. Of course, this is now an established policy. But, it's wrong IMHO.

    Bob complains that in 2000 Gore's campaign trips were reported differently from Bush's. It may be that Gore was charging some of his campaign travel to his Vice Presidential budget. If so, there was a valid reason to treat these trips differently. Bush (or the Bush Campaign) would have been as paying for his campaign. John Q. Public would have been paying for some of Gore's.

    However, I admit that the above paragraph is speculative. I don't actually know to what degree Al Gore charged campaign trips as official travel

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "I think it's appropriate..." [no acknowledgement that "focus" without balance is partisanship]

      "BTW my impression is..." [cue fact-free speculation]

      "It may be that..." [why yes, more speculation free from the tethers of reality]

      "I don't actually know..." [belated admission that everything typed was rubbish]

      Delete
    2. Washington, Adams, and Jefferson were not ordinary persons.

      Delete

    3. What did George W. Bush fans eat for lunch today?

      By Leslie Kelly on September 27, 2006 12:51 PM






      The President was in Memphis for a fundraiser at a private home today, with the Peabody Hotel catering the meal... at $2,000 a plate.

      Here's the menu:

      Hors d'oeuvres
      Curried Chicken Salad in a Mini Cheese Basket
      Mini Smoked Salmon Lollipops
      Crabmeat Cigars with Sweet Thai Chili Sauce
      Black Mission Fig with Prosciutto and Gorgonzola
      Vegetable Tartelette with Goat Cheese

      Drinks
      Sweetened and Unsweetened Fruit-Flavored Iced Tea with Lemon and Lime Wheels
      Voss Mineral Water
      Lemonade with Fresh Lemons to Garnish

      First Course
      Goat Cheese Walnut Mousse and Smoked Trout Rillettes with Assorted Olive Relish, Rosemary Crostini and Pickled Beets

      Main Course
      Sherry Poached Breast of Chicken with Spiced Estragon Consomme, Pearl Pasta and Vegetables, Oven-Roasted Tomato Tzatziki

      Dessert
      Flourless Chocolate Cake and Pineapple Almond Tart with Fresh Berries, Raspberry Coulis and Chocolate Straw

      Yes, I had to look up estragon... a fancy moniker for tarragon!
      Here's the team that put that meal together: Executive Chef Andreas Kisler created the menu.

      Executive Sous Chef Andrew Black and Banquet Chef Brian Williams helped to prepare it.

      Executive Pastry Chef Konrad Spitzbart did dessert.

      UPDATE: A person who attended the lunch commented on the blog that president did not actually eat... too bad, sounds like he missed a delicious meal.

      Delete
    4. it's the stupid, stupidMay 30, 2013 at 10:57 PM

      this is apparently just a post from some random blog, not an article from a mainstream news source. so what's your point?

      Delete
    5. I'm glad we can still get access to the Menu even after Citzen's United.

      Delete
  2. Another signal from the Times: "winter" as a verb. That's a killer.

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  3. A lot of liberals are crowing over Michelle Bachmann's fade, for whatever reason, into the sunset. Bachmann is a religious conservative, and often bigotry in these matters is a sadly two way street. What's really distressing about Bachmann is that She would attack the President on matters such as these, with nothing to sustain her charges, and then go TV and claim that She got the information "on the internet." The Scandal is that such people aren't thrown out of Congress, or get elected in the first place.
    Leaving aside the Sea Bass for a moment, how does the Times arrive at it's other numbers? 180,000 per hour? Maybe, but how are you breaking that down? Is he still performing duties involved in his Presidency while traveling, and are you including his Salary?
    As Bob says, this is bullshit, and it takes someone with dreams of turning Benghazi into Watergate to play along. Sad because such reporting, with evenly and objectively applied standards, could be incredibly useful. But, let's be honest, the people on the Editorial Board of The New York Times know which fork you use on a Sea Bass, if you catch my drift....

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  4. Obama must be stopped. Texas must be independent. And we need a new money-system. Read more on my blog (please click on my nickname).

    ReplyDelete
  5. Clear proof that the Times is mad

    The word "mad" has two meanings. Bob's text indicates that he meant "angry", rather than "insane". Don't know whether the ambiguity was intentional or not.

    ReplyDelete