Democrat class privilege

While those of an "affirmative action" mind-set may say that America owes it to the current occupants of the White House to live like aristocracy, I still rather fancy the thought of former U.S. President William H. Taft and his wife who kept a humble cow on the White House grounds for fresh milk.

The British press today reported that "Michelle Obama's five-day Spanish holiday - picked up by the American taxpayer - could easily top £250,000 (that's £50,000 a day)" [or $75,000 US Dollars a day] (Mail Online, August 6, 2010). Some, observing her "lavish break in Spain with 40 friends" at a time of economic austerity for fellow-Americans back home, reportedly have been led to compare her to "a modern-day Marie Antoinette."

A discussion over at Snopes.com was already making overtures in this direction over the Obama family's earlier vacation in Hawaii last month, noting that the First Lady was photographed in Hawaii wearing a $635 pair of designer shoes by Maison Martin Margiela that would have made Imelda Marcos envious, and that the Obama family's ten-day stay at an $8.9 million estate for an estimated $4000 per night would top out at a cool $40,000. Which, of course, pales compared to the $375,000 total for the First Lady's five-day Spanish getaway.

I guess this goes to show that "class privilege" and the trappings of nobility are not just the province of Old World royalty or nobility, or "fat cat" Republican corporate CEOs. Even members of the Communist Politburo in the former Soviet Union did not wait in bread lines with fellow members of the proliteriat in their ostensibly "classless society," but lived like royalty -- with special, state sponsored department stores which stocked everything and were off-limits to everyone else, and opulent vacation getaways on the Black Sea paid for by the government. Sort of like perpetually voting yourselves raises in the Houses of Congress, along with provisions of immunity from the terms of your own legislation, so that you become -- along with your president and many "perks" (like printing more money when you have none) -- members of a "privileged class" immune to inflation and economic woes.