Good Morning Gentle Readers,
TWC thought Gate Crasher-Gate was hilarious last week but it got funnier when I saw my old buddy Ed Royce with the Blond Interloper. The occasion was President O'Blama's state dinner honoring the King, er, Prime Minister of India.
For the uninitiated, a state dinner is typically lavish, dripping with all the accouterments connected to wealth, prestige, protocol, and social status. These affairs are conducted primarily for the benefit of America's Imperial Presidency, a term that perfectly describes the upper echelon of Washington's ruling class, whose titular head is the President of the United States.
United States Marines wearing dress uniforms act as servants, announcing each arriving guest by name. The United States Secret Service ensures that the commoners who pay for the sumptuous delicacies and fine wines enjoyed by the invited guests and the Imperial Presidency remain excluded.
Contrast this tax-paid extravagance with President Jefferson, who walked to his inauguration, brought his personal chef to Washington from Monticello (at his own expense), and stocked the White House wine cellars out-of-pocket. His. Not the taxpayer's.
Socialites and the horsey set, as the Associated Press described the gate crashers, don't impress me much. By all accounts the Salahis give off the essence of plastic. Still, any time Washington's royalty can be knocked down a peg or two, I count it as a positive.
DISCLAIMER: TWC's leftie friends who are currently in the throes of apoplexy (or, perhaps, are having a cow) may take solace in the fact that this screed is not directed explicitly at the current occupant of the White House, though he is as caught up in the pomp and circumstance as any. The Imperial Presidency has been ascendant for many, many decades, possibly for more than a century.
Secondarily, TWC isn't against lavish dinner parties, he's enjoyed many and even owns a tuxedo. The difference is this, Gentle Reader: you haven't been forced to subsidize my indulgences.
For the record, Ed Royce is a good guy and is still libertarian leaning (and a friend of Reason). Of the 535 in congress there are but a couple dozen that are worth a plugged nickel, one of them is Ed. He is as principled a small government kind of guy as you can be and still get elected.
Interestingly enough, TWC has it on good authority* that local Latinos with politically created problems are far more likely to get needed help from Ed than they are from charismatic & popular Loretta Sanchez.
I
ran into Ed a couple of years back at a gala honoring
Maggie Thatcher in LA. Afterward, we chatted for a while. Oddly enough,
though Ed is familiar with Mrs TWC, he had never made the connection to the last
name. Several times he glanced across the room at Mrs TWC and, grinning, You!? And
her? Really?
Whole sordid tale here.
As Ever,
TWC
Tip of the glass to El Jeronimo de Crow
*Like Woodward and Bernstein, TWC cannot reveal his sources, but in this case the source(s) are above reproach. You'll have to take my word for it.
