Michelle Obama is on holiday again, her 8th of this year (or is it the 9th?), but this time she and a number of guests are relaxing in Spain. Her stop there includes at least 30 rooms (maybe more: some estimates are as high as 60) at a posh, five star hotel where rates start at $500 a night and go to $6,600.
That’s not exactly roughing it and flies in the face of the country’s 9.5% unemployment and 131,000 jobs lost this past month. It also flies in the face of past calls by the Obama’s for sacrifice like this one made by President Barack Obama in January: “everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good. Everybody is going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game.” But I guess “everybody” doesn’t include Michelle or her friends.
“Material Girl Michelle Obama is A Modern-Day Marie Antoinette on a Glitzy Spanish Vacation” writes Andrea Tantaros in an article of that name found in the August 5th New York Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/04/2010-08-04_material_girl_michelle_obama_is_a_modernda
y_marie_antoinette_on_a_glitzy_spanish.html
From that article we learn:
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 the nation, and he’s referenced it 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.
…
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 ABC the First Couple is “not that far 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.”
Like Mel Brooks used to say in his movies, “It’s good to be the King.” But really Michelle, was this necessary especially now? If you wanted to go to Spain couldn’t you at least have taken a commercial flight with your friends and saved the taxpayers the costly bill of footing Air Force Two’s gigantic carbon footprint in the air? And do you need to stay at such a lavish place, one of the top ten most expensive and luxurious hotels in the world, when Americans are suffering? Your daily hotel room is costing more than some Americans are getting in unemployment benefits a month. If they qualify for such benefits, that is.
Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times, Obama’s adopted city, has also laid into Michelle for her lavishness http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2010/08/michelle_obama_at_luxury_spain.html
By the end of the summer, Mrs. Obama will have taken eight vacation trips — including her visit to Marbella, staying at the five-star Hotel Villa Padierna with daughter Sasha and some pals.
…First ladies often go on vacations, with and without the president. An issue for Mrs. Obama may be how many: New York in March; Chicago, over Memorial Day; Los Angeles in June; Camp David — sort of an extension of the White House — in July; Maine in July, to highlight Acadia National Park, and now Spain. Mrs. Obama is glamorizing Spain’s coastal resorts before her Aug. 14 first family weekend visit to Florida’s Gulf Coast, to encourage tourists scared away by the oil spill. Starting Aug. 19, the Obamas will spend 10 days in Martha’s Vineyard.
Actually, the writer may be giving Michelle a Sweet deal because I seem to recall Michelle and family having spent something like a 14 day holiday in Hawaii from last December to early January so that makes 9 holidays this year for her. Hawaii; Rondo and Madrid, Spain; Martha’s Vineyard; the Maine Coast. It’s tough to be the first lady, I guess with all that cook’in and maid work at the White House. Oops, she doesn’t really do any of that in Washington, I forgot she has professional chefs to rely on there and a vast staff to support her and her family. But really Michelle, where’s the sacrifice that your husband has been calling on average Americans to make?
Meanwhile, the L.A. Times at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/08/michelle-obama-spain-.html reports this:
“But one White House official said Obama had a “small” group of friends and “minimal” staff on the trip, and said personal expenses, such as hotel rooms and meals, were being paid for by the Obamas.”
The British newspaper the Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/michelle-obama/7932155/Michelle-Obama-cri
ticised-over-expense-of-Spain-trip.html provides more details of Michelle’s big holiday which makes the Marie in the Marie Antoinette comparison look like the poor Cinderella:
The expectation yesterday that Mrs Obama would attend a star-studded charity gala held at her hotel last night, hosted by Hollywood stars Eva Longoria and Antonio Banderas, led to a scramble for tickets among celebrities and socialites wanting to rub shoulders with the First Lady.
More than 400 tickets were sold for the “Starlite Gala” at €1000 each, according to organisers, and a further 200 people put their names on a waiting list after learning that Mrs Obama might be present.
Among those clamouring to dine in the same room as the wife of the US President were a host of minor European celebrities and aristocrats, including Gunilla Gräfin von Bismarck, great-granddaughter of Otto, who has a home in Marbella. Also expected to attend was the tennis player, Boris Becker with his wife Lilly Kerssenberg, and bestselling spiritual guru, Deepak Chopra, who had all flown in for the fund-raising event in aid of children’s charities.
One name on the guest list that could raise a few eyebrows among US diplomatic circles was Adnan Khashoggi. The Saudi Arabian businessman, 75, who made his name as an arms dealer in the 1980s, was linked to the Iran-Contra scandal in which the Reagan administration allegedly sanctioned the sale of weapons to Iran in breach of an international arms embargo.
Another rumoured to be going was Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of the former prime minister, who has a home in the hills above Marbella.
So Michelle will be rubbing shoulders with the offspring of the Iron Chancellor (von Bismarck)and the Iron Lady, who (Mark Thatcher) by the way, was was involved and jailed for a coup d’etat of a legitimate government, and one of the world’s biggest arms dealers. That is an impressive list of no-goodniks even by the standards of somebody like the lady who lost her head in the 1700’s.
I would also guess for Marie Antoinette 60-70 rooms would be “minimal” but at between $500 and $6,600 bucks a night even Marie might have told her friends to “eat cake”. The Daily Mail (U.K.) has estimated that Michelle’s big trip is costing U.S. taxpayers 50,000 pounds a day (roughly $75,000 day). http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1300852/Spanish-police-close-public-beach-Michelle
-Obamas-250k-Spanish-holiday.html The newspaper also suggests that US taxpayers will have to foot the bill for increase police coverage in Spain which like the USA is basically bankrupt. The Daily Mail also writes:
Spanish newspaper El Mundo detailed the Obamas’ dinner on their first night in Spain. The tapas menu for the delegation included sea bass tartare, strawberry gazpacho and sardines, followed by a main course of lobster with seaweed risotto.
The meal cost about £40 a head, according to El Mundo – which means a bill topping £1,600 would have hit the table if all 40 friends dined together.
Stretched over five nights that’s £8,000 for dinner alone.
Whether or not the taxpaying American will be paying for meals, they will definitely be footing the bill for the First Lady’s 68-strong security detail, her personal staff – and the use of presidential jet Air Force Two.
The per diems for the secret service team runs at around £172 each, which amounts to nearly £60,000 for the length of the summer break.
Use of Air Force Two, the Air Force version of a 757, comes in at £91,900 for the round trip. This does not include time on the ground.
Mrs Obama’s personal staff, of which there are an unknown amount and who might cost considerably more per day, also have to be taken into account.
The American public will also cover the cost of the only official part of the holiday, a visit to the Spanish royal family on the island of Majorca.
This will involve transport there and back for the entourage – as well as travel, accommodation, food and expenses for all while on the island.
Conservative estimates already put the total cost at £150,000. With Majorca to come, the bill will be more like £250,000.
Even a website run by a Black American http://blackpoliticalthought.blogspot.com/2010/08/first-lady-michelle-obamas-pleasure.html had this to say about Michelle’s trip to Spain:
I don’t want to come across as a hater, but I do have a problem with the cost of First Lady Michelle Obama’s trip to Spain, considering we are in a recession and people are still losing their jobs and their homes. I wouldn’t go as far as calling her a modern-day Marie Antoinette, but I am disappointed that they could spend thousands on the taxpayers’ dime for her 68-strong security detail, her personal staff – and the use of presidential jet Air Force Two. I must add, they are footing the bill for their personal accommodations. This certainly does not send the right message. Considering the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom flew on a commercial plane during his visit to the U.S. recently.
In good economic times, I would have just shrugged my shoulders to her pleasure trip abroad, but these are tough economic times for just about everyone on Main Street and this just sends the wrong message, especially in light of the fact that the family has taken a few vacations lately. According to the U.K. Daily Mail, by the end of the summer, Mrs. Obama will have enjoyed eight vacations since her husband took office.
Back in the U.S., anger was mounting – especially as it has emerged the First Lady will have enjoyed eight holidays by the end of the summer.
I don’t mean to suggest that the First Lady and the First Family shouldn’t take vacations; they should, they have stressful positions. But is this level of luxury (staying at one of the top 10 most luxurious and expensive hotels in the world) necessary especially now when the Obama administration seems clueless on how to deal with the unemployment/economic crisis? Where is the kind of sacrifice that President Obama rightfully called for ALL Americans to make?
I guess the answer is: “let them eat cake”.
