Barack Obama gave a big, lavish, new-money party at his sprawling mansion on the water because he wanted to seem cool. Being cool is important to him.
...
It’s hard to stop thinking about the over-the-top fete the former president held at his Martha’s Vineyard manse for his 60th birthday...is such a perfect taxonomy of the Obama arc.
Really? It's hard for you to stop thinking about it? I had completely stopped and barely gave it a thought when I did. Maureen Dowd sounds obsessed with Barack. Why is she writing about Barack five years after he left office. Okay, I have a vague recollection that Dowd pissed Obama off ?over something she wrote about Michelle? I want to say in the 2008 campaign. Was it Dowd who wrote that Michelle had described Barack as "snorey and stinky" in the morning? No, it was Michelle to Glamour. Dowd and Obama got on each other's nerves over something, I'm pretty sure.
As president, he didn’t try hard enough on things we needed.
Style--not enough Hope?, substance? What?
He was a diffident debutante with a distaste for politics.
Post-presidency, he is trying too hard on things we don’t need.
What do we "need" from Barack post-presidency? Why does he owe us anything post-presidency?
The culture is already swimming in Netflix deals, celebrity worship, ostentatious displays of wealth, not to mention podcasts. Did the world really need “Renegades,” his duet with Bruce Springsteen?
No, the world didn't "need" "Renegades", which I never heard of until you mentioned it. But why is it not okay with you that he did it? He should only do things that the world needs, evidently. This is WEIRD!
Obama was a cool cat as a candidate in 2008, but after he won, he grew increasingly lofty. Now he’s so far above the ground, he doesn’t know what’s cool. You can’t be cool if you diss the people who took risks for you when you were a junior senator — only a few years out from paying off your student loans...
Who?
Many of those who helped Obama achieve the moonshot, becoming the first African American president and then becoming uber-rich, were disinvited.
To the 60th birthday bash. Who helped him on the way up got disinvited? Dowd doesn't say. Obama scaled the party back after catching flak for having so many people at a party. The party was largely maskless and Obama caught shit for that, too. The latter is fair criticism.
The party crystallized the caricature of the Democratic Party that Joe Biden had to fight against in order to get elected. It was as far from Flint and Scranton as you can imagine: an orgy of the 1 percent — private jets, Martha’s Vineyard, limousine liberals and Hollywood whoring — complete with a meat-free menu.
I understand how that is politically incorrect. I am unaware that Biden "had to fight against it". Obama campaigned for Biden. "Orgy". "Whoring". I know this will surprise you that I didn't attend (and didn't get an invite), so I don't know: Was there a sexual orgy with Hollywood whores that Obama participated in?
The disinvitados, as one referred to them, were in four camps: Some didn’t care, some pretended they didn’t care, some were annoyed, and some were deeply hurt, especially loyal former staffers who felt they had contributed more to the Obama legacy than the likes of George Clooney, John Legend and Don Cheadle.
Sorry, I've got to ask: Was Maureen Dowd one of the "disinvitados"?
Colbert, who was disinvited, joked that he was axed because the president had to limit the guest list to “only his closest Beyoncés.”
Only one person was thrilled to be disinvited, and you can guess who it was...Larry David (who has a home on the island) figured he was going to be asked to perform. He went into a tailspin, trying to think of what routine he could come up with in three days.
“I was pretty glum when I finally called back his assistant,” David said in an email. “When he told me I was eighty-sixed from the party, I was so relieved, I screamed, ‘Thank you! Thank you!’ He must have thought I was insane. Then I hung up the phone, poured myself a drink and finished my crossword puzzle.”
Whether the party was 500 or 300 or 30, Obama should have made sure to have the people there who made the moment possible, the ones who worked so hard to get him elected and cement his legacy.
So you're saying no one "who made the moment possible" attended.
David Axelrod, Pygmalion to Obama’s Galatea, was a disinvitado, which he handled with his usual grace. Rahm Emanuel, the former Obama chief of staff who helped him navigate the first two successful years of his presidency, was also disinvited and quipped in the Times story by Annie Karni that getting voted off the island was character-building.
OK. Those two for sure should not have been disinvited. My God, that is being an ingrate!
Obama would not have been president if Nancy Pelosi had not subtly put her high-heeled shoe on the scale for him against Hillary Clinton and her chances to be the first woman president. And he would not have gotten health care passed without Pelosi. She wasn’t there.
Was she invited? Was she disinvited?
It was a bombshell when Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama in 2008 along with her uncle Teddy, a turning point in the primary against Hillary. After being disinvited from the party, Kennedy had the speaker [i.e. Pelosi] at her home on the island for dinner. “I would have disinvited me if I was him,” she joked.
That is true and that too is indefensible.
David Geffen, whose endorsement of Obama and break with Hillary was instrumental, didn’t even get an invite.
One disinvitado joked that he’s going to throw a surprise 61st birthday party for Obama. “As long as they had anything to do with passing health care, rescuing the auto industry and saving the economy from a Great Depression,” he said, “they’re invited.”
Well, I take some of it back. Dowd does end up naming names and just those four who were disinvited, in favor of George Clooney (who I have heard of), John Legend and Don Cheadle (who I have not), is cold, not cool, cold. Yes, Barack demonstrated his preference for celebrity over substance. But to indict Barack's presidency, "He didn't try hard enough on things we needed"? Dowd is never specific on that so that must remain unfair. He created a "caricature" of the Democratic Party that Biden had to "fight against"? I don't think that that's true. But it's still obsessive. A birthday party five years after the guy left office? And it still reeks of revenge-taking. There was some bad blood between Barack and Dowd. He mentioned her in his book, A Promised Land, if I'm not mistaken. After all of these years? To devote a whole column to it. It's not like this is a blog post, one of many a day, this is a twice-weekly column! I don't like it; it's a hit job.