MICHELE OBAMA – THE MODERN DAY MARIE ANTOINETTE
Obama is a modern-
day Marie Antoinette
on a glitzy Spanish
vacation
Andrea Tantaros
Thursday, August 5th 2010, 1:53 AM
visits Marbella, southern Spain.
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
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.
Reports are calling the lodgings
of Obama’s Spanish fiesta, the Hotel Villa
Padierna in Marbella, “luxurious,” “posh”
and “a millionaires’ playground.” Estimated
room rate per night? Up to a staggering
$2,500. Method of transportation? Air
Force Two.
To be clear, what the Obamas do with their
money is one thing; what they do with ours
is another. Transporting and housing the
estimated 70 Secret Service agents who will
flank the material girl will cost the
taxpayers a pretty penny.
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Perhaps it could be that the Obamas, who
seem to fancy themselves more along the
lines of international celebrities than actual
leaders, espouse a different view of
sacrifice. When Michelle Obama
accompanied her husband to Copenhagen
along with best buddy Oprah Winfrey, she
billed the trip – an ultimately unsuccessful
bid to bring the Olympics to Chicago – as
follows: “As much of a sacrifice as people
say this is for me or Oprah or the President
to come for these few days, so many of you
in this room have been working for years to
bring this bid home.”
A quick jaunt to Denmark is a sacrifice?
What portraits in courage!
The Obama modus operandi is becoming
clear. From lavish trips to Spain to
reportedly flying Bo, the President’s
Portuguese water dog, on a separate
aircraft to vacation with them in Maine, to a
date night in New York City that perhaps
cost nearly $100,000, 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. Just this month, Obama told
removed from what most Americans are
going through.” And that “it was just a few
years ago that we had high credit card
balances, we had two kids, thinking about
college. We had our own retirement
accounts, wondering if we were going to be
able to get enough assets in there.”
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