The Strain in Spain

Somehow this country has gone from "Sock It To Me" to "What's It To You?"

Always one to touch the finish just beneath a "wet paint" sign, I had to wade right into a Facebook controversy yesterday - something else that Obama did!  Oh that Obama!  Just the worst person on earth!  What did he do now, the scalawag, the rakehell, the ne'er-do-well?

Wait a minute.  Wrong Obama.

It's the wife. Michelle

Obama.  Why, she took a trip, took her older daughter to Spain.  You're not paying for the accomodations or the meals or any of the rest of the expenses for her friends or anything.  And all over the internets, people are howling.  They call her "Marie Antoinette," and don't you believe that many of the chins nodding in approval could not identify Marie Antoinette or talk about her "cake" quote?

Listen, the Obamas are well-to-do people.  They both got up off their arrears and went to school and got advanced degrees and have done very well in their professional lives.  They know that a parent needs to educate their child beyond the narrow borders of a vacation at Veronica Lake - if they can afford it.

The Obamas can afford it.  And you know, all this outrage is being orchestrated by spinmeister Matt Drudge, who still can't seem to get over that stained blue dress that Monica Lewinsky wore.  He stirred up that stupid tempest in a teapot and now he's all over this.  But you did not pay for this. Most of the expense has been met by the Obamas and their friends who are with the First Lady on the trip.

And I can only wonder how loud the chorus would be had the president gone along!  So he stays home and he still gets hollered at.

For the past couple of years, I have ascribed a lot of this animus toward Mr Obama and his family to latent racism...the very notion that an African-American could ascend to the highest office in the land.  Now, I am starting to think that there is also a huge dollop of class envy on top of this dessert.  People are hollering, "Hey, I'm out of work and Michelle is in Spain on a vacation!"

And if she had stayed home to rearrange the furniture in the White House, would that have brightened your prospects for employment?

I said on Facebook yesterday to a contumacious chorus of haters that I figured from the day the man was sworn in that he could have ended the war, solved the financial crisis, cured cancer and brought happiness and contentment to the masses, and still they would pick on him. And no one  - not one member of that chorus - even bothered to deny this.  The comment I kept getting was a variation of, "I hate him."  No reasons, no facts, just "I hate him."   People who lack his education, and yes, his income past and present can say what they want, but I smell a whole big mess of sour grapes when the best thing they have to holler about this week is where his wife chose to go on vacation.

If she can afford to go there, what's it to us?