WANTED: one honest, decent, middle-class politician who doesn’t want to be a rich celebrity.
Just imagine Bronx-born, feminist Democratic Rep. Bella Abzug showing up to a $35,000-a-plate dinner in a dress that cost more than some people in her district made a year? And then staying for the pathetic vegan dinner to hobnob with the unimaginably wealthy celebrities and other “elites”?
That’s what Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did at the Met Gala on Monday, sporting an Aurora James gown that declared: TAX THE RICH.
“The medium is the message . . . BEFORE anybody starts wilding out,” the congresswoman wrote on Instagram in response to critics calling her a hypocrite. “NYC elected officials are regularly invited to and attend the Met due to our responsibilities in overseeing our city’s cultural institutions that serve the public. I was one of several in attendance. Dress is borrowed.”
The other public official in attendance? The local face of hypocrisy, nepotism and mismanagement, our universally be-loathed mayor, Bill de Blasio.
Where is the party of Ohio Sen. Howard Metzenbaum and astronaut John Glenn? Where is our Nellie Tayloe Ross (America’s first female governor) or Shirley Chisholm (first female presidential candidate)? People who went into politics not to make money or with an eye only for the next election, but for their constituents.
While the Democrats scream about #MeToo and social justice, Bill Clinton (the self-proclaimed “first black president”), an accused rapist, proven liar, friend to pedo-perv Jeffrey Epstein and craven social climber, is still lauded as a hero in the Hamptons — as is his wife, Hillary. Meanwhile, Hillary still can’t understand why she lost the election (Russian interference! Media manipulation! Misogyny!) and still doesn’t get that the majority of Americans who earn under $10 million a year and don’t live in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco still remember the economic disaster of 2008, when she was a powerful New York senator and absolved the craven bankers, looking the other way as they got bailed out as Main Street suffered. America’s fury was compounded when it was revealed that, after she left the State Department, she was paid up to $225,000 per speech and earned more than $3 million from addressing financial firms. During one of these speeches at Goldman Sachs — one of the biggest villains of the market crash — she called attendees, including CEO Lloyd Blankfein, “the smartest people” for supporting her.
As one Democratic state official in Kentucky, who distanced themselves from the Clintons during the 2016 election, told me about Bill and Hill: “They’re like the reverse Midas Touch. Everything they touch turns to (bleep) while they get rich. They’ll say anything but just do as they please.”
Then there’s their friend, former President Barack Obama (the first black president), who failed to deal with the looming tech monopolies and instead courted the overlords instead of regulating them. He backed his aide Larry Summers’ disastrous economic plan that screwed Main Street while rewarding big banks, failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform, and turned a blind eye to Syria (even when Assad sniffed at Obama’s “red line” of using gas on his people).
Obama, who feted A-listers such as Dwayne Wade and Bradley Cooper at his 60th birthday bash in Martha’s Vineyard this summer, now seems to be burnishing his new title: Celebrity Sycophant in Chief.
And of course, there’s our current Bumbler in Chief, President Joe Biden, who has put our country in danger multiple times since taking office. From the abominable pullout of Afghanistan, where he literally armed the Taliban by leaving Bagram Airfield full of weapons and working machinery (not to mention leaving behind desperate Americans and people who aided Americans) to the $3.2 trillion “infrastructure bill” full of pet projects and cash grabs that will cause inflation to balloon. And let’s not forget him shrugging as his grifter-turned-artist son, who has peddled his influence to foreign powers, now sells his work through a questionable gallery to blind bidders.
A former FBI agent in the art crimes unit fumed to me: “During the Obama administration, Biden was all about backing transparency in the art market — now he doesn’t care because his son decides to be an artist and needs a job?”
I am ashamed to admit: I voted for them all (with the exception of AOC, who is not in my district). Because I felt I had no other option. The right is too far right and the left has now become unrecognizable with #defundthepolice and insane handouts that stagnate our economy. It pains me that I fell for the promised equity of Main Street and tax parity time and time again. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me five times, well. Let’s just say I’m done.
The fish stinks from the head down.
It is time for our system to open up and truly become a democracy for all, with representation for all, by expanding beyond the two-party system. With people who mean what they say and say what they mean, and who will fight — not to stay in power and enrich themselves, but for the people they represent.
Follow Paula Froelich on Instagram @pfro
