Things To Do With the Price of Cindy McCain's Outfit
| Thu Sep. 4, 2008 2:12 PM PDT
Vanity Fair added up the value of all the parts of Cindy McCain's ensemble Tuesday night and came up with this:
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100
Why is Cindy McCain's $300,000 outfit relevant? Because just one day later the GOP spent the evening slamming Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist (using, ironically, former CEOs Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, and Mitt Romney to make the case). For reference, here are some things you could do with the money it took to buy Cindy McCain's outfit.
- Buy the average American home, which costs $266,00.
- Fund the $5,000 tax credit John McCain proposes giving to working families to help with the annual cost of health care. You could cover 60 families.
- Buy 30,000 anti-malarial bed nets, including distribution to Africa and education on use for recipients.
- Pay the tuition of 59 Arizona State University students.
- Fly a Learjet 60XR for two and a half days at the price of $4,800 an hour (it's the only way to get around Arizona, you know).
- Provide 6,000 students with school desks taken away by a schoolteacher that Mike Huckabee knows.
- Give tire gauges to 75,949 Americans hit hard by the price of gas, so they can get better mileage in their cars. Or so you can mock Barack Obama.
- Send nine community organizers and one part-timer into the streets to work for a better America (hahahaha!).
Look, there's nothing wrong with being rich. But there is something wrong with the party that has been in bed with the super-rich and with Big Business for decades, and has consistently pushed policies that benefit those interests, claiming to know the pulse of the working man. The price of Cindy McCain's dress isn't relevant because of Cindy McCain, the woman can wear what she wants. It's relevant because of what it illustrates about the Republican Party.
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Comments
This is unfounded speculation. "Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000?$25,000" A Jeweler did not examine the Jewelry under a magnifier. Hence no opinion can be made.
This is unfounded speculation. "Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000?$25,000" A Jeweler did not examine the Jewelry under a magnifier. Hence no opinion can be made.
F*ck the dress, what about all the time money and effort wasted by BOTH parties in the past two weeks on these meaningless, ridiculous coronations?
Let's fight the real enemy here. At least Cindy McCain didn't waste YOUR time and money on her dress.
When the REPUBLICANS fraudulently with the help of the REPUBLICAN'S CORPORATE lobbyist led Democratic Leadership Council, DLC; e.g., Joe Lieberman, took over Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court; the common population was told to "get over it". Well, we couldn't allow ourselves to "get over it" and hopefully Obama will shake the DLC off, and take the country back for WE THE PEOPLE this November.
This is unfounded speculation. "Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000$25,000" A Jeweler did not examine the Jewelry under a magnifier. Hence no opinion can be made.
I'm with you in spirit, Jonathan. Being an interior designer from a struggling middle class family who himself makes a small personal income, helping wealthy people make home and life style decisions, I get a bitter daily dose of the sentiment you expressed. I've heard more than one woman in that higher income bracket say, "I think I'm kind of for Obama, but try getting [insert hubby's name here] on board! No chance. That five percent at the top he wants to tax harder? That's us!" No s--t, dippy! And I appreciate every dollar you spend with me, but, come on, you have two or three houses and you've just spent an hour agonizing over the color of your pantry - paying me for my opinion. Don't you think you can take a little hit for the team? Maybe forgo the redo of the guest bedroom at the beach house for just one season so that the money for the bedding and drapes alone might put a disadvantaged kid in our community through one semester of community college? It's a donation, s--t head, so you still won't see it go to taxes. And I've done the research and math - I've sold drapery to people that would have gotten an underprivileged child an associates degree. I make my living off people with disposable income and many of them are warm and gracious folks, but try getting them to understand the idea of sharing the excess - impossible.
Paul dear, if you were rich like your clients, you would behave just like them. That is human nature. We who are the serving class have always envied the wealthy. When I see members of my class advance to the wealthy, do you think they remember where they came from? No way. They act like they were always wealthy. Such is life. Stop the daydreaming get real.
I am tried of hearing about that plane, good old boy network and John McCain,s POW years; we all have heard this. What are you going to do to create jobs, what are you going to do with the economic and what are you going to do to ensure my grannkids have a future this scare the heck out of me. I am tried of hearing about the surge and war.
Well, Carl, you're rich in condescension and conjecture anyway. I think you must have read the first two lines of my post and nothing else, or you would have seen that I wasn't expressing envy but contempt.
I like nice things, I traffic in them in a sense, but I do not envy wealth. I understand the tendency and I probably have brief pangs now and again, but active envy is impossible for me because that isn't part of my value system. And to address your comment that I would be the same, I must say that proportionate to my income, I donate a far greater percentage to the welfare of people who need help than my clients do. They spend their money on their lifestyles and to make sure their kids wind up as crazy competitive as they, through expensive education and a barrage of extracurricular activities. My hundreds toward donations a year would become thousands if my income was ten times what it is and thus more in line with the income of my clients.
Cynics like you confuse a dark view of things for a knowing sophistication and in doing so you usually miss the point. If you believe yourself to be petty spirited enough to withhold wealth beyond even what it takes to live luxuriantly in the name of the greater civic good, than that is your truth. Please do not assume the same of me, since you don't know me at all and are only using me to suggest that you are the proud owner of some jaded wisdom.
Yet I agree that MOST people with excess wealth don't understand the idea of giving back, in my experience. That is why I DO advocate a robust tax on the top five percent.
I totaly agree with you Jonathan. I guess when you are spending 300K in clothes and accessories it is hard to think there are people who are feeling the impact of bad economy. Enough already about McCain being a POW. People want to hear about the conomy.
Carl, you need to stop generalizing without knowledge. I fall into the category of wealthy. But I do not forget the poor and certainly don't behave the way you think all wealthy do. Cindy McCain does. Every time I think of taking a long fancy vacation I start to think that I can probably feed many African children with that money.
Well, I agree. Jesus raid a wealthy man had a much chance of getting into heaven as a camel thru the eye of a needle. Christianity is not about wealth [materialism] but spirituality.
You cant serve two masters.[Mammon and God] Its why I find the Republican hypocrisy so glaring.
8 houses - $3 million dollars
1 Convention outfit - $300,000
Being out of touch with the average struggling American family - priceless!
How can any educated person not realize that the opulence and decadence shown over the last few days isn't out of touch? Does the average American family making around $50,000 really expect to get anything out of the Republican party except rhetoric that makes them believe that they'll be better off. Please read this article regarding the impact of Dems vs Rep economic policies over the last few decades: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/business/31view.html?em
The last 8 years has delivered an erosion of civil liberties, increase of fear (mostly imagined), loss of real purchasing power, increase of unemployment, increase of the deficit - these are not fictitious or imagined stats, they are real. The gap between the have's and have-nots has increased. It is time for a revolution of economic balance, otherwise the demise of the American dream will be realized, just as Rome fell 2 millennia ago.
The Republicans have and will continue to use fear as a tool to intimidate and gloss over the real issues that we as a country need to deal with: erosion of jobs, loss of political influence in the world, and so on - along with the loss of respect for the American idealism that has occurred as well. After 9/11 the outpouring of support was squandered for the agenda of a few power hungry and revengeful few. It is shameful behavior that will take decades to repair.
I agree, Sarah Palin's bastard grandchild is of no consequence and McCain's POW experience is only consequential because it is what makes McCain so angry, and it is also why McCain has held onto Bush like a baby, with the exception of his acceptance speech, McCain has been all over Bush, hence the reason he is called McBush. Anyone who has been tortured to the extent McCain has apparently been tortured should not even be in the Senate much less the presidency. We certainly do not need "Rocky and Bullwinkle" in the presidency of the United States. Rocky is squirrelly, and all Bullwinkle can do is try to pull a rabbit out of the hat......eeenie meenie chili beanie..... the spirits are about to speak, but a rabbit Bullwinkle can never get..
Throughout these comments people have debated whether Cindy McCain deserves her money, or should use it differently, etc. But there is a question that no one is asking--what do I do with MY money? How many tire gauges could you have purchased with last week's bar tab or the shirt you picked up as a "special present for me."
Society is always driven by greed, capitalist greed drives us to exchange goods to the benefit of ourselves and the person we are trading with, and socialist greed drives us to seek out others goods that we can re-appropriate to a greater group benefit. But I guarantee you, that they are equally driven by human greed. A prime exhibit it how we are so quick to vilify Cindy McCain for spending money, yet we would all justify equivalent purchases on our personal incomes and would be angry if we were required to share our earned monies.
True change comes from individuals choosing to live lives of compassion and selflessness, a state which is almost always contrary to human nature. For me, the only answer to having any ability to change is how Jesus Christ can change my heart to be others-centered and less focused on my own wants and selfish desires. Writing this post has reminded me too of how I have been wasteful and is making me think i should return the shoes I bought on thursday, which i don't really need...
