First of all, a disclaimer: I am hardly a bastion of fiscal restraint. Spare dollars spill from my pockets like bold-roast from the nozzle of a Bunn machine; the irony being, of course, that many of my spare dollars are poured into my coffee-drinking habit. And I also want a MacBook. One of those shiny new aluminum ones that if they were any smaller… sleeker… thinner… they would probably be considered a concealed weapon by the Department of Homeland Security. I want one so badly, in fact, I almost told myself that I wasn’t going to write this bloggie-post until I was typing it in Pages, in my new iWork ’09 suite, on the crisp, back-lit keyboard of the aforementioned shiny Apple thing. I went so far as to imagine myself withholding any further creative contribution to the bloggie-thing lest I was given a small, user-financed stipend with which to purchase a MacBook, in return for more bloggie-posts from yours truly. (And, by default, more chances for me to look way-cool sitting in coffee shops tapping away on my aluminum slate, that Glowing Apple Symbol exuding my Ultimate Hipness as I sip away my last simoleons… sigh…)
But I digress. My frumpy blue Dell will do. Why? Because I don’t need a MacBook. And I can’t afford one, anyway, because the economy is in tough shape. And because the economy is in tough shape, my place of employment could no longer offer me enough hours to stay financially afloat in my current position. I’ve stepped down to a lower position for more hours, but less pay, and also because keeping that position would have cost my coworkers precious hours that they needed, too. You may have heard me mentioned in Barack Obama’s inaugural address today. He knows what position I’m in.
So why the hell did he shell out $160 million of taxpayer funds to throw himself a housewarming party?
Naturally, I was a bit shocked to hear this number. But the knowledge came to me not from hearing it verbatim, but hearing about people who were angry about hearing about that figure, which I shall heretofore refer to as The Number. Someone had written an angry-sounding status post on Facebook which, some sources say, is a Very Effing Accurate indication of when something truly touches a nerve. And another someone was overheard to be angry about it, too. Another, and then another. Pretty soon, my Millennial Generational truth-seeking instincts kicked in, and as Lyra worked the intricacies of the alethiometer in The Golden Compass, so I worked my keyboard and GOOGLED IT.
My top hits included a veritable crapsmear of conservative bloggie-things, raging at the ridiculousness of it all: “160 million dollars?! Dubya spent a paltry 42 MILLION! And Clinton before him, 33 MILLION! That double-talking scoundrel Obama!” etc. etc. Somewhere in the middle of the second page of hits was an ABC News release, channeling a guy named Some Sources Say, repeating something Mr. Say had pulled off the AP wire. Frick, I thought, it’s true! I’ve been heedlessly supporting a self-absorbed tax-me-so-he-can-spend-it-on-himself LIBERAL, and am now entering 4 to 8 years of purgatory for my belief in False Hope. Forgive me, Ronald Reagan, for I know not what I’ve done!
But in my despair a still, small voice whispered in my ear to move to the Bookmarks menu in my Firefox, and scroll to the “M” section. Upon my arrival I was comforted, as that of the presence of an old friend, an old Indecision ’04-era friend named Media Matters for America. From their website: “Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” Eureka! A media watchdog group! Surely now the truth about The Number shall be revealed to me! But wait… it says they are a PROGRESSIVE organization. Doesn’t that mean… LIBERAL? That means they might lie for partisan gain! My High Hopes dashed for the second time in 5 minutes, I scrolled down the page aimlessly and hopelessly, until something caught my eye… Is that a picture of lefty blowhard Chris Matthews? With a special watchdog section dedicated just to the misinformation he peddles on Hardball? My Hope-a-Meter shot skyward, as I seemed to have found a progressive-yet-truth-seeking and honest oracle of record-straightening research from which to glean the answer to the question of The Number. And sure enough, on the front page, an entire section was dedicated to sorting through the media’s misinformation surrounding The Number. I pored over the information:
-The Number was concocted by an AP writer who cited no sources whatsoever. Oh.
-The Number was then dutifully reported by FOX News who, when they repeat something three times and Rupert Murdoch clicks his heels together, causes all other media outlets to report the same, lest they be deemed as “UN-FAIR AND LEFTY-BALANCED”. Okay.
-The Number seems to have been created by taking the estimated $40 million-ish cost of ceremonial trappings and organization, balls, meals, parades, and other celebratory necessities, plus a rough estimate of security and infrastructure, transportation, and making sure visitors don’t tear apart each other or our nation’s capital. Wow.
-The Number, when put in the context of Clinton’s $33 million and Bush’s $42 million, IS ridiculous. But what’s ridiculous about the Bush/Clinton numbers is that NEITHER of them includes the security/infrastructure/transportation/chaos-control numbers that make up the bulk of the cost of any Inaugural event, numbers that WERE included in Obama’s The Number. Geez, that’s not fair!
-The Number is, then, when inflation is accounted for, actually right on-par with any of the Inaugurals of the past 20 or so years. And the number for Bush’s 2005 Inaugural, when it’s all tallied up and put in the same context as Obama’s The Number, was not $42 million, but $157 million! Adjusted for inflation, that might even mean that Bush’s number was bigger than The Number! The scoundrel!
-The Number, when broken down to a per-capita-spending basis, looks positively frugal. Approximately 400,000 people attended Bush’s 2005 Inaugural. If we take the $157 million number, that means that Bush spent approximately $400 per attendee. In contrast, if this year’s pre-Inaugural estimate of 4 million people actually descended upon Washington today, and we used The Number for the sake of argument, the number that we pull out of the wash becomes $40 per attendee. That’s less than what it cost to see Sigur Rós at the State Theater last fall!
And 40 times less than a MacBook! Thanks, Media Matters! You answered my question!
I know we can debate the merits of spending taxpayer dollars (whatever that means anymore) on frou-frou, faux-royal events for our political elite. I’d probably lose that argument, as I’m one of those starry-eyed Hopey McHopefulpants who thinks it's pretty damn sweet to watch one of the few true peaceful transfers of power in the world on such a grand frou-frou, faux-royal stage, no matter who’s being inaugurated. I’m proud to spend that money. The fact that 4 million people can make a pilgrimage- 4 million people who most likely have 4 million much more useful things to spend their money on- to the center of the most powerful nation in the history of the world and watch firsthand as a man not so different from themselves assumes the responsibility of guiding this nation through one of its most trying times, and not risk getting, ya know, sliced to pieces with a machete or anthraxed to death or something… yeah. That’s pretty amazing.
They say that freedom comes with a price. Are we so willing to send- or maybe I should say, “spend”- 4,000 human lives in some foreign country in the name of this “freedom” and yet we’re not willing to spend a relatively modest sum of money to celebrate and display to the world what it means to be free? Isn’t that what 4,000 human lives was supposed to buy us?
Are we so wrapped up in money that we no longer see value as anything more than a price tag? That’s so sad to me.
And on a significantly lighter note, that’s why I think I’m going to buy a MacBook.
**The Media Matters articles I pulled from can be found here, and here.
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