Another wedding
It probably did not escape your notice that Chelsea Clinton got married this past weekend.
The bride and groom and her parents seemed happy. I’m all for that.
And I really don’t care how much they spent on the wedding, as long as it was their own money and not mine. I’m just that big a capitalist.
But it got me thinking. And when I think, I Google. And when I Google, I find this:
And this:
First thing I noticed was she was fairly attractive before she got bitter and angry.
Second thing was her dominant “body language.” You rarely see a woman’s hand on a man’s shoulder unless she thinks he needs to be controlled.
CWCID. He looks less dorky than I did in that era. My wife looked better than Hil, though.
These photos reminds me of the latest generation of snapshots from cell phone cameras. Pictures of my sister’s kids, for example, travel from a soccer field in South Carolina to a computer screen a thousand miles away in seconds. Amazing, yet the quality of the images is as poor as yellowed snapshots from the 70s.
For a decade or so, digital cameras provided good quality images not subject to degradation. The omnipresence of cell phones seems to prevent people from taking the extra effort required to carry their digital cameras or retrieve them from the drawer when a Kodak moment presents itself. More pictures, less quality. Cell phone cameras are ruining photography.
As someone who has done a far amount of observation and portraiture–I could be wrong–but it strikes me that in picture #1 Hillary has the slightest of leers on her face (her lips especially) as she looks out at the camera.
Wolla Dalbo: yes, I really like that photo of Hillary. To me, it indicates that the Clinton marriage partook of mutual lust from both parties, at least initially.
The older couple look nicer in youth than they turned out later.
I guess I’m sufficiently cynical to wonder if it was all their own money that paid for it. I doubt the full accounts will ever be made public. Tho, arguably, with such a huge affair, the question of influencing a certain person with a Very Important Job by contributing part of the festivities might arise.
And it was partially our money: how much did all those Secret Service agents and extra police cost, after all? I will shut up if the Clintons paid for them all…
The Clintons stayed at the home of George Soros’s daughter. Draw your own conclusions.
I thought the whole thing was … well, vulgar and overly-ostentatious. Granted, I am sure the money spent paid a fair amount of wages, locally … but the whole thing smacked of a royal wedding with all the peasants standing on the sidewalk, gawking at the aristocracy. Wish the couple well, in a distant sort of way, and hope that the caterers, and the temporary security people, and the dressmakers and flower-arrangers, and charter town-car drivers all got themselves nice fat paychecks out of it. But I still think it was a very vulgar display.
I’ve always considered it a rule of thumb that the more lavish the wedding, the shorter the marriage. But I’m cynical that way.
Irony of ironies, Hillary is still soliciting for funds to pay off her campaign debt. From the Washington Examiner:
The Hill, July 20:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has turned to DVDs to help retire its debt from the 2008 presidential race.
Her campaign circulated a fundraising e-mail on Tuesday saying that donors who contribute $35 or more to retire the “last bit” of the debt will receive a DVD of the former first lady’s “historic” speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
“If you missed the first opportunity to buy a DVD of her speech, you are in luck. We have a few of our special edition 2008 National Democratic Convention DVDs left, and we wanted to share them with you,” the letter says.
It’s a good thing for Bill that Hillary married him. If she had married someone else, that guy would have become president.
I, too, do not care how much the Clinton’s spend on a wedding, but it begs this observation:
Just how do two people who have spent most of their lives drawing paychecks from public service jobs amass enough assets to afford a multi-million dollar wedding for their daughter?
Ah, the good old days, when they could stand each other.
T Says:
August 3rd, 2010 at 8:42 pm
If you put scare quotes around “public service” it becomes clearer.
It shows that every couple on the ir wedding day is a new Adam and a new Eve.
I don’t really begrudge Chelsea her dream wedding. I hope they’re very happy together, and I hope for her sake that Mark doesn’t decide to get cozy with an intern in the future. It must be hard for her to have faith in marriage given the model she grew up with.
But the thought of the former president (not to mention the current one) being so up close and personal with the Soros family makes me ill, quite frankly.
Well, sue me. Hillary was butt ugly then, and she is butt ugly now.
br549: I think you’re letting your opinion of her politics get in the way of your ability to see what she looked like.
As to the question of how public servants such as the Clintons amassed such a fortune, it’s pretty simple, even without the cynicism of assuming theft or otherwise unethical dealings: Bill’s been out of public life for nearly a decade. Does anyone think he’s sitting around twiddling his thumbs? One short speaking tour alone could have paid for that wedding. He doubtless commands a six-figure appearance fee. A few speaking engagements, and he has a hefty sum of money that he doesn’t need to save or spend (thanks to Hillary’s salary and his own government pension), and he can play the market to his heart’s content. It was probably a trivial matter to amass such a fortune.
(Full disclosure: My “neo-con-version” – see what I did there? – came slowly, from about 1999 until 2002, so I did vote for Bill twice, and I confess to still having a bit of a soft spot for him, even though rationally I have come to realize what an utter schmuck the guy is. Thank G-d I was out of the country in 2000, otherwise I might have voted for Gore.)
Sorry Yackums I disagree.
Unless one wins big in the lottery, it is never a trivial matter to amass a fortune. Whetner it is done honestly, dishonestly or a combination of both, it takes much planning, decision making and attention to detail. I think rickl above (9:23 pm) is probably correct. It wasn’t a life of public service, it was a life of “public service.”
T, what Bill Clinton collects for giving a half-hour-long speech would be like “winning the lottery” for you or me.
Yackums,
This is true but you’re missing the point. It’s not the amount of money he can demand as a speaker, it’s his willingness to demand it.
Now, I don’t begrudge anyone asking for what they can get, but when it falls on the back of a public service official, it makes it appear that their life in public service had nothing to do with serving the public at all, but that it was simply career track to celebrity status and exorbitant speakers fees after leaving the public paychecks behind Ergo the “public service” comment by rickl above.
Make no mistake about it, Bill Clinton is not raking in the dough because he’s a former governor or former president,. He’s being paid the over-generous compensation paid to celebrities. By contrast, do you think Harry Truman or Dwight Eisenhower commanded absurdly high speaker’s fees after they left office?
I’ve always thought that Hillary was a beauty in her younger and middle younger days. It wasn’t her body per se (ankles are too thick for example). It was more the intangibles. I confess though that I also liked some of her hair experiments in the 1990s. For me, she was a classic that many men desire – a woman full of mystery, intelligence, and of her desires. Too bad all of that is gone now.
Wow!
Penny Marshall, aka Laverne, dated Jay Leno? I never would have guessed.
I’ve always thought Hillary was passably attractive. She really was glammed up during her days as First Lady. As Sec. of State – looking kind of dowdy. I’m sure the hours are long and the problems non-stop. Not much time for glamour.
I guess it’s only me, but I see the wedding as the merger of the Arkansas hillbillies with Wall Street. The old rags to riches story. Except now politics seems a surefire route to millions. ‘Twasn’t always so. Checkout Harry Truman. It is the new paradigm.
Like others here, I’m glad that some caterers, florists, gardeners, carpenters, musicians, etc made some nice money off this affair. That kind of spending increases the velocity of money. Something that is badly needed in the economy right now.
“That kind of spending increases the velocity of money. Something that is badly needed in the economy right now.”
Or, as someone we know once said, “We have to take things away from you for the public good…” Heh!
Newton,
I guess you were making a point. If so, it went over my head. Do you know anything about economics? Or do you just like to quote anonymous sources to make a point?
T,
I do hear what you’re saying, but you can’t compare presidents from 50+ years ago to today in terms of speaking fees, even in adjusted dollars. If Reagan were still alive and still lucid he surely could command six-figure speaking fees, and I bet that even GW Bush could command high fives if he wanted to. Some presidents like Mr. Soetoro (he’ll probably command seven-figure fees) chase the limelight, but I think Clinton just accepted it and welcomed it, which, you can’t fault the guy for that. It may eventually have corrupted him, but rare is the person who is immune to that (GWB may be one of those).
Whatever. We can agree to disagree about Clinton; I’ve already admitted my bias (compounded by the fact that I was a 20-y.o. college student in ’92), but if your complaint is that he got too rich unjustifiably, well guess what, you sound like a Democrat.
Anyway, that’s hardly the only way he could have made money. Look at Giuliani’s post-mayoral career as a business consultant. He made a pile.
I don’t think in the summary of my entire life will I see as much money as Mark and Chelsea spent on their wedding. I’m sure all leftists can join together in the hope of a revolution that will promote the reform and re-education through labor of those two.
Yackums,
It’s not a disagreement; we seem to be talking past each other. I’m not concerned about the large speaker’s fees that celebrities can command. My concern is when it is done on the back of a public service career.
Numerous reports over the past years have referred to the inordinately large size of Clinton’s speaking fees, especially those coming from various Arabian sources (Abu Dhabi, I seem to recall). My question is what kind of backroom dealing went on in the former public service career to justify this large payment, and was said payment actually compensation for favors rendered while in public service?
If there was backroom dealing, then this puts him and perhaps Hillary in the class of Rod Blagojevich, and causes me to hold suspect any and all of the activity of his presidency. Was he acting on behalf of the American people, or was he primarily concerned with laying a career track for wealth, the people be damned?
I don’t care about people making large sums of money in thjeprivate sector; I do object when the vehicle is a “public service” career which in fact rapes the public behind closed doors for personal gain.
Yackums,
A timely post at Instapundit which captures my thoughts exactly:
INSIDER TRADING inside the Beltway. “A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that that Senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat the market by only about 6% a year during that period. A reasonable inference is that some Senators had access to — and were using — material nonpublic information about the companies in whose stock they trade.”
Posted at 10:17 am by Glenn Reynolds
Even then, it’s one thing to rade in inside information, it’s quite another to draft legislation precisely because one would profit from it personally, the public good be damned.
Sorry, should be “. . . trade on inside information. . . .”
A quote I read somewhere that illuminates my 8/3 9:23 pm comment:
I’m gone to tell my little brother, that he should
also visit this webpage on regular basis to get updated from most recent news.
It’s truly very complicated in this active life to listen news
on TV, therefore I simply use internet for that purpose, and take the
newest information.