Oh, sure, there’s the Merry Hell beloved of the old time writers. But Hell’s largely supposed to be a punishment. And what a punishment it would be, to be forced to sit and sup for eternity with Barack Obama, and the people he considers worthy to be graced with his ineffable company:
Trapped in a room with a collection of pompous and entitled people utterly convinced of their brilliance and moral purity, whose conversation ranges from what’s in this month’s Atlantic to what’s in this week’s Economist, who haven’t been told No in years—and then being informed that there is no escape? This, friends, is the vision of hell that greeted me in Monday’s paper: not of other people but of self-important ones, in a well-appointed house with no exit, eating an organic gluten-free farm-to-table meal and endlessly repeating the conventional wisdom as if they were coming to it for the first time. To look at the plans for Obama’s retirement is not just to see that big-dollar fundraising never stops. It is to peek inside the Bobo abyss, to visit the purgatory of the coastal elite—to enter, in horror, the balsamic inferno.
And I like balsamic vinegar.
Huh. Sounds like my high school class reunion….
Sartre got there first : No Exit .
…. somewhere, the shade of Elanor Roosevelt is .. grinning, I think, but it’s hard to tell…
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Mew
Either way, it’s terrifying.
Indeed. Remember what her role among Dems became, prior to JFK …
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Mew
The notable thing is that these billionares, millionaires, and celebrities all lacked the self-confidence to leave until dismissed.
That’s amazing.
And horrifying.
I would not want to be on O’s Naughty list.
My question is: You’re invited to such a dinner. You want to give the President some heartfelt advice. And Obama, as narcissistic as he can be, still wants to DO GOOD. What would you advise him to do, or to focus on?
Education in black teenagers in the US? Skills training in the US, instead of Pie-in-the-sky everyone should get a college education stuff? The environment outside the US [waaaay too many people involved in the US already, he’d have to share a podium with Al Gore]? Expanding water supplies in the poorest of 3rd world countries? Human Rights Abuses in Islamic Countries?
The best-written villains are the heroes of their narratives ..
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Obama likely does think of himself as a brilliant, heroic figure .. and he’s got some serious “limousine liberal” attitudes. I figure the best way to use him is .. shaming the rich into community reinvestment. Arts programs, “urban gardens”, that kind of thing.
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He and Michelle can show up, give a speech, turn over a shovelful of dirt, then .. come back at the unveiling, give another speech, etc. etc.
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Mew
Yeah, something he can take credit for after others do all the work…as per usual.
Gotta work within the parameters available ..
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Mew
European food safety standards.
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Because you aren’t after him checking into a psychiatric hospital.
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Most ironic would be reforming how the mentally ill in America are overlooked. Make a concentrated push to have the severe cases, especially the drug addled, declared mentally incompetent, and then keep them from troubling others.
That .. would make Obama a fitting closing parenthesis to Jimmy carter, who started dumping the homeless on city streets…
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Mew