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As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Sunday, January 25, 2009

How Dare Anyone Celebrate The Election!

Normally I like James Rainey, but he's left something out of this extended whine about the cost of inaugural ceremonies during this economic downturn.

With Obama speaking eloquently about the need for sacrifice in a time of need, it seems only natural people might want to know how that squares with a $150-million party [...]

Six years later, the public overwhelmingly supports the new president. Surveys show that even a majority of Republicans have a positive view of Obama.

That gives Obama tremendous power -- and the press a tremendous responsibility, to avoid being carried away.

It might not be a matter of life and death, but I'd still like to know: What else could we have gotten with that $150 million?


His point about the herd mentality among journalists is fine, but Rainey is acting like public money was put to the food at the Inaugural balls. Well, that's just not true. It was privately funded. You can quibble with who provided the funding, mostly wealthy donors and lots of it from Wall Street (so maybe it's public funding by the transitive property, from the bailout to the executives to the balls), but if there were no inaugural balls more people wouldn't have health care. That's a false impression, and ESPECIALLY considering that Rainey is criticizing the media in this piece, he ought to correct it.

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