Why Isn’t The Media Criticizing Obama’s Lavish Inauguration Preparations?
I just heard Sean Hannity talking about the millions Obama and his supporters spent on post-election victory parties, and the millions more they’re slated to spend on his lavish inauguration.
Now, I really don’t care how much Obama plans to spend on these things. I think that the bill to the taxpayers should be limited to reasonable expenditures for the official event, and anything outside of that should be paid for by Obama’s campaign funds and/or Democrat party funds. As long as they’re not spending the public’s money they can spend as much as they like.
What interests me, though, is how the media was all over President Bush for holding inauguration celebrations in 2004 that were too lavish (according to them) for a country at war. They compared his full-scale inauguration celebration as being distasteful when compared to FDR’s last inauguration which took place toward the end of WWII.
Of course, that was FDR’s fourth inauguration. And he was in poor health. But that didn’t matter to the media. They cast Bush as some sort of uncaring plutocrat. A modern Nero, fiddling in Washington DC while Rome burned.
So why isn’t Obama getting that same sort of criticism? The war in Iraq isn’t as pressing an issue as it was in 2004 (thanks to Bush, you know, winning it), but economic times in this country were one heck of a lot better in 2004 than they are now. We just saw 500,000 jobs lost in the last report. Across the nation the economy is slowing down. Industry is begging for federal bailouts. People are nervous, and for good reason.
And in the midst of it all Obama is throwing himself a lavish party.
Now, again, it doesn’t matter that much to me. But if Bush’s 2004 inauguration was worth of criticism…why not Obama?
