Paul Craig Roberts asks the obvious (and therefore unasked) question (h/t James Wolcott, "Let Them Eat Wedding Cake"):
The marriages of Madonna and film director Guy Ritchie, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren, and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones pushed up the cost of celebrity marriages to $1.5 million.Let me add my impertinent voice. Clinton gave us NAFTA, that giant sucking sound, which sent muchos jobs abroad, then told us to retrain ourselves. For that he was named the "education president." How's that for serving Shinola and getting credit for Dutch chocolate?
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes upped the ante to $2,000,000.
Now comes the politicians’s daughter as celebrity. According to news reports, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to investment banker Mark [sic] Mezvinsky on July 31 is costing papa Bill $3,000,000. According to the London Daily Mail, the total price tag will be about $5,000,000. The additional $2,000,000 apparently is being laid off on US Taxpayers as Secret Service costs for protecting former president Clinton and foreign heads of state, such as the presidents of France and Italy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair . . .
Before we attend to the poor political judgment of such an extravagant affair during times of economic distress, let us wonder aloud where a poor boy who became governor of Arkansas and president of the United States got such a fortune that he can blow $3,000,000 on a wedding.
The American people did not take up a collection to reward him for his service to them. Where did the money come from? Who was he really serving during his eight years in office? . . . These are not polite questions, and they are infrequently asked.
As governor, he was very close to papa Tyson, the poultry king, whose chicken . . . effluent . . . was poisoning the rivers of Arkansas at the time. Tyson was a huge contributor, and Clinton was also called the "environmental president." You don't have to veer to the right to find this stuff, folks. It's everywhere you look — if you look.
It's icing on the (ahem) cake that the bride and groom are both hedge fund employees. Can you smell the Robert Rubin on those pumps and wing-tips?
Thank to Mr. Roberts for saying the obvious — and to James Wolcott for impertinently pointing us there.
GP
