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Obama girls fly to Paris
Another expensive private date, and this time it's a family affair
Sightseers who spot two little black American girls cruising along the Seine on a bateau mouche this weekend, or taking the lift to the top of the Eiffel Tower, may well have spotted the First Daughters, Malia and Sasha Obama.
Michelle Obama is taking the two girls to Paris on Friday. They will join their father, Barack, in France for the Normandy landings anniversary, and then stay on to see Paris with their mother while he returns to Washington.
The Obamas are making the family trip despite the fuss last weekend over another private jaunt, when the President took his wife to dinner in New York and on to a Broadway show. Republicans questioned the cost to the taxpayer of their helicopter flights and attendant securty - estimated to have run into tens of thousands of dollars - never mind that the First Family pays its own way on such occasions.
It will be the girls' first foreign trip since they moved into the White House in January, but not their first journey abroad: both girls accompanied their parents on a 'roots' trip to Kenya when Obama was still a senator.
The White House is offering no official announcements of their sightseeing plans, nor where they will be staying. ·
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Where, I wonder, is the logic of questioning the cost every time the Obamas get on a plane or stay in a hotel? We do not seem concerned about the cost of other financial issues in the public domain, which are likewise supposed to set an example to us all: for example, how much the rest of America's politicians, civil servants and administrators cost the taxpayer when they travel to fulfil their functions, or whether government departments are run efficiently or cost-effectively.
Nor do we question the raft of immeasurably greater expenditures made daily in the US of A as part of the everyday business of running a country. The moral hypocrisy of this jibe is breathtaking. But on close examination, hypocrisy never seems to be absent for long in most people's lives, does it? Nothing new there then.
Of course, this is not sensible or logical criticism at all: it is taxi driver-style carping, it is the blathering of small minds that cannot raise the thinking process even to a mediocre level. So we have this, instead of intelligent thought.
It's a telling reflection that such pettifogging comment is a recurring theme at present. It shows the emptiness, the vacuum even, that exists in the public consciousness (and likewise in the media) on political or other issues of the day.
The fact that the Obamas pay for their own family outings, as opposed to the business ones, is disregarded; the fact that all entertainment is kept to modest rather than extravagant levels is also ignored. Contrast this with the endless trips at US taxpayers' expense by the previous incument at the White House to head off to the golf course, to the ranch in Taxas, in fact to anywhere away from work.
If Mr. Obama was the President of a company, taking his family to Europe would not be a problem. They can not find anything to attack his with, not his policies, personal life, intellect, actions, so resort to this.
Presidents travel all the time, both for business and pleasure. It's necessary for a person in a high pressure position. All the hullaballu is put forth by republican spin doctors who have neglected to add up the travel costs of the most vacation-ed President of all time, Dubya Bush. So, just can it, will ya'.
I'm all in favor of European trips which provide both educational and entertainment opportunities for the whole family. However, in today's economy Mr. & Mrs. Obama should be setting an example to their children by saving such events until a better time. Additionally, the entire cost should come out of their personal bank accounts...not the taxpayers' dwindling funds.