From "Behold Barack Antoinette" by Maureen Dowd (NYT).
August 14, 2021
"He was a diffident debutante with a distaste for politics. Post-presidency, he is trying too hard on things we don’t need."
"The culture is already swimming in Netflix deals, celebrity worship, ostentatious displays of wealth, not to mention podcasts. Did the world really need 'Renegades,' his duet with Bruce Springsteen?
We already knew Obama gravitated to stars but it was disillusioning to see it on such a grand scale last weekend. 'I think the nouveaux riches Obamas are seriously tone-deaf,' said the authority on opulence, André Leon Talley. 'We all love Beyoncé. But people have so many things to worry about with Covid, voting rights, climate warming. People are afraid of being evicted from their homes. And the Obamas are in Marie-Antoinette, tacky, let-them-eat-cake mode. They need to remember their humble roots.'
Obama was a cool cat as a candidate in 2008, but after he won, he grew increasingly lofty. Now he’s so far above the ground, he doesn’t know what’s cool...."
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24 comments:
Harry and Meghan sucked the oxygen out of Obama's post-Presidency.
IMO, America will be paying a steep price for 0bama’s two-term Reign of Error for as long as she exists.
is MZs Dowd a(na)u[tom]atically taxonomizing Barack with Gatsby because >>>>>
i would call him reluctant Daisy
"he is trying too hard on things we don’t need."
Has Barry ever "tried hard"? Apart from filling out his NCAA bracket, I mean.
I don't fault him for not trying hard: he realized early on how to game the system, as a clean and articulate sort-of "black" man, the kind of person guilty white liberals liked promoting and giving stuff to--in college, at HLS, at Annenberg, at UChicago even, in IL politics, finally on the national scene, followed by the Netflix protection payments to "craft narratives."
The Protestant ethic is for chumps. Barry is the modern American Dream personified.
Well. I knew the Afghan government would lose Kabul the moment we left. I never suspected for a moment that Obama would lose Dowd, ever. Apparently giving the wrong kind of party at the wrong time in the wrong way has opened her eyes. So that's what it takes to change DC opinion.
Isn’t this simply a new money vs old money situation? The Obamas are enjoying their wealth, however it came to be, high on the hog, which is their right. In a generation or two, when they recognize that gives them little joy, the family priorities will settle into the quieter, more gentile, less ostentatious, more purposeful, sort.
Oh, I wouldn't worry your little head about it, Maureen- Obama will be under water soon enough when his Massachusetts estate is flooded by global warming.
The professional experts and mouthpieces on the Left are always the last to see reality and typically acknowledge it only when the damage has already been done.
Check out Sophia Coppola’s 2006 “Marie Antoinette” on Amazon Prime. A story of languid people slowly doing languid things. Delicious. Nothing much happens, until, well, you know.
I am shocked, SHOCKED! . . . well actually, I'm not shocked at all. I knew Obama was an empty suit and a political hustler in 2008.
Nor am I shocked that it took Dowd this long to see through him. "Distaste for politics"? Politics was his road to self-advancement. His only distaste was for anything political that didn't lead to the greater glory of Barack Hussein.
I am mildly surprised that Dowd is finally seeing him as he is.
Obama shouldn't have struck Dowd's name from the guest list.
Matt Taibbi did an article a few days ago on his substack. It is a subscription site for $5.00 a month. Used to hate him when he wrote for Rolling Stone, but this format seems to work for me. I have been following him on Twitter.
The Vanishing Legacy of Barack Obama
I guess I should not be surprised, but I am amazed how the left savages him any time he says something that does not fit their narrative. Althouse should be able to relate.
He is getting to become more like Scott Adams, in the way he responds to his detractors.
Check him out on Twitter.
Matt Taibbi
Whenever I hear the phrase “ nouveau riche”, I think of Back to School. “Get this, towel boy...no matter what you think, you will always be a crude...obnoxious, nouveau riche little phlebe.”
That sounds more like something they’d say about Trump. In any case, it makes me dislike the speaker and increases my sympathy for (in this case) the Obamas. If people who use that term are upset with the Obamas, then there’s something they’re doing right.
The press has certainly given him a pass on this party. So thank you, Maureen.
Former President Obama’s soirée has already met the CDC’s criteria for a superspreader event. But Sturgis is just the worst as per Fauci
Well - I'm not saying that the optics were all that great for the party, but aren't all of us sick of the endless Covid hysteria? For some reason, Dowd's column makes me somewhat more sympathetic to Obama than I otherwise would be.
People are having weddings, people are eating out. The country is basically ready to be done with this and for the most part is estranged from the sobbing officials on the TV telling us that they are so, so scared, and later being photographed out with friends, unmasked, at various venues.
Obama always was skilled at playing to what many Americans thought was "right", and in this case, he may be just as skilled. This was a big party mostly in a tent, with a lot of ventilation. So maybe it makes the administration's hysteria look, well, hysterical. But the same CDC jerks who were assuring us that political protests with thousands of people crowded together in the open air were not a danger last year (before vaccinations), cannot really justify sniffing about this post-vaccination.
It is their risk to take, and if they thought it was a good risk, then they had the right to take it. The people who work in the stores, the factories and the warehouses - the people who feed us all and have kept the country going - probably don't look at this and see huge risks. It looks a lot like their daily lives, just like more fun.
Take it as a 2021 version of Kennedy's "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
People are ready to be done with the fear. I guess the Obamas were too.
Et tu, Mo Do?
Shouldn't that "debutante" be "dilettante"? Debutante has a disturbing misogyny in this context.
What do we need Obama to do? Maybe his carrying on with normal life (making money and celebrating milestones) is exactly what we need to see.
What this shows is that Zero has F You money and connections.
Also, good one MM!
"Shouldn't that "debutante" be "dilettante"? Debutante has a disturbing misogyny in this context."
Look at the title of the column: "Behold Barack Antoinette." Using femininity to insult him was intentional.
I, for one, can't wait to see his Labor Day Spotify playlist.
Obama always wanted to be more Denzel Washington than George Washington.
As for Barbara’s comment about Sophia Coppola’s movie where nothing happened until it does—that’s a radical transition form her usual nothing happens at all! Saw Lost in Translation and was bored to tears. My wife watched with me because of Bill Murray, and greatly regretted doing so. At least it was no “Unbearable Lightness of Being,” the exemplar of my bad movie advice to my wife and a running joke in my 34 year marriage!
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