What are They Thinking?

I was not going to blog again until the first but I just couldn't help it.

I really do not want to be a killjoy, but…and I don’t like being a wet blanket, but…and I hate being a party-pooper, but…and I don’t want to rain on someone’s parade, but…and while I don’t want to ruin someone’s party or be just a cranky old man, crass, unkind, malicious or unfair, or even an envious nobody or a disgruntled bystander, or even just plain bitchy, just what in the world are Bill and Hillary thinking?

We are reminded every single day of the growing and ever more obscene discrepancy between the rich and the poor, we are told there are more people living in poverty and on food stamps than ever before, that millions of our citizens are out of work, some for so long they have exhausted their benefits and are being thrown to the wolves, hundreds of thousands of our citizens are said to be going hungry, there is little or no reason this is going to change in the near future, or even at all, we are being told to bite the bullet, and the future looks grim.

So what are Bill and Hillary doing? Why, putting on a multi-million dollar wedding for Chelsea, what else? Depending on where you look, the estimates for this super extravaganza range from two to five million smackers. There are to be 500 guests, all people Chelsea knows personally it is said, the catering is estimated to be $1500 per person (a mere $750,000), rental for the facility could be between $125,000 and $200,000, $250,000 for the flowers, $40.000 for music, $35,000 for photographs, and apparently somewhere in the vicinity of $35,000 for security. I don’t know if these estimates are correct but I doubt they are very far from reality. The guest list reads like a who’s-who of important people, but neither the Obama’s nor the Gore’s are being invited (I gather). I guess Bill and Hillary don’t want to risk being upstaged by the current President and First Lady, and Al Gore has obviously fallen from grace (even though he has been exonerated from the charge of being a dirty old man). In any case this is obviously a Fairy-tale wedding, even grander, more expensive and ostentatious than many royal weddings (and I thought there were no royals in the United States, silly me).

Don’t misunderstand, I actually like the Clintons, all of them, and I certainly hope that Chelsea will be happy with her new husband, but, really, don’t you think this is a bit much (to say nothing of rather insulting to those in such obvious need)? Whatever happened to that nice young couple from Arkansas, hardworking and ambitious, champions of the underdog, who both apparently aspired to become President? While they were not poor they certainly were not wealthy either. Hillary, it is said, bought her modest wedding dress “off the rack” the day before her wedding. When they finally moved into the White House many thought of them as merely “hicks” who could not possibly make it in sophisticated Washington. But they thrived and made it big, in spite of all the unscrupulous attacks and open animosity. Now they have become both wealthy and famous. They seem to have joined those who made fun of them and attempted to ruin the Clinton Presidency. Bill now pals around with the Bush’s and they obviously move in the highest social circles. I do not begrudge them their successes. Bill, “the big dog” Clinton is active in charities and still has tremendous influence, Hillary is now Secretary of State and doing well (although she is much too hawkish for my taste). It is said they are interested in buying a ten million dollar estate. They seem to have reached that “Promised Land” the Reverend Martin Luther King spoke about so eloquently, although not exactly in the way he conceived of it.

So what is it that bothers me so much about this wedding, apart from what I regard as a terrible waste of money for what should be, in my mind at least, a relatively modest, mostly family, ritual? The fact that it seems to me to personify, “nouveau riche, nouveau riche, nouveau riche,” in huge, blinking neon signs that I find unpleasant. I always thought Bill and Hillary had that elusive quality we call “class.” I am disappointed.

Lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
And when he once obtains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds,
scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend. - William Shakespeare