Over the weekend, famed New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/14/opinion/barack-obama-birthday.html">pilloried</a> former President Barack Obama over his 60th birthday bash which was full to the brim with Hollywood glitterati while some political figures who had helped Obama rise to power were either left out or disinvited. Dowd described the party as “an orgy of the 1 percent — private jets, Martha’s Vineyard, limousine liberals and Hollywood whoring.”
Dowd began her attack by likening Obama to the fictional Jay Gatsby of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic “The Great Gatsby”:
<blockquote>Jay Gatsby gave big, lavish, new-money parties at his sprawling mansion on the water because he wanted to seem cool. He wanted Daisy to notice him. Barack Obama gave a big, lavish, new-money party at his sprawling mansion on the water because he wanted to seem cool. Being cool is important to him.</blockquote>
Dowd quoted fashion journalist and former American editor-at-large of Vogue magazine Andre Leon Talley on the Obamas: “I think the nouveaux riches Obamas are seriously tone-deaf. We all love Beyoncé. But people have so many things to worry about with Covid, voting rights, climate warming. People are afraid of being evicted from their homes. And the Obamas are in Marie Antoinette, tacky, let-them-eat-cake mode. They need to remember their humble roots.”
Dowd gushed for a moment, “Obama was a cool cat as a candidate in 2008,” then segued, “but after he won, he grew increasingly lofty. Now he’s so far above the ground, he doesn’t know what’s cool. You can’t be cool if you diss the people who took risks for you when you were a junior senator — only a few years out from paying off your student loans — taking on the fearsome Clinton machine.”
Dowd snapped, “Whether the party was 500 or 300 or 30, Obama should have made sure to have the people there who made the moment possible, the ones who worked so hard to get him elected and cement his legacy.”
Dowd referenced some of the political world&#8217;s no-shows at the birthday bash, including David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, Caroline Kennedy, and David Geffen.
In March 2018, prior to Obama and his wife Michelle inking their multi-year partnership deal with the internet streaming service Netflix two months later, a senior adviser to Obama <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/us/politics/obama-netflix-shows.html">enthused</a>, “President and Mrs. Obama have always believed in the power of storytelling to inspire. Throughout their lives, they have lifted up stories of people whose efforts to make a difference are quietly changing the world for the better. As they consider their future personal plans, they continue to explore new ways to help others tell and share their stories.”
Netflix <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/obamas-made-deal-with-netflix-their-new-film-celebrates-michelle-obama">announced in April 2020</a> that the Obamas&#8217; company Higher Ground Productions’ latest film was a documentary celebrating Michelle Obama, following her as she traveled around the country to promote her bestselling memoir, “Becoming.”

US-POLITICS-OBAMA-CORRESPONDENTS

‘Limousine Liberals And Hollywood Wh*ring’: Famed NYT Columnist On Obama B-Day Bash

Barack Obama

birthday

Maureen Dowd

Perhaps they should have known from Day One of their 13-stop speaking tour, when they drew just 3,300 people to a 19,000-seat arena.
But Bill and Hillary Clinton are all about them dollars, so they&#8217;ve pushed through with their poorly attended tour and now have resorted to selling the undesirable tickets on Groupon.
Some tickets for one stop in Canada for their &#8220;An Evening With the Clintons&#8221; tour sold for just $5, but now they&#8217;ve cut prices by nearly 60% in a deal with <a href="https://www.groupon.com/deals/gl-lnc-the-clintons-la-2019">Groupon</a> to draw more people.
&#8220;On the official site, there were still seats for the tour available for up to $325, with other floor seats going for $83 plus a hefty service charge, but on Groupon, they can be picked up for as little as $35,&#8221; the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6473637/Bill-Hillary-Clinton-resort-using-Groupon-generate-ticket-sales.html">Daily Mail</a> writes.
<blockquote>
The tour is currently on a break for the holidays and reconvenes in New York on April 11, 2019, before moving on to nine other cities including DC, Boston, LA and Las Vegas.
For their May 19 show at The Forum in Inglewood, California, &#8211; which seats more than 17,000 &#8211; tickets usually priced at $77 are now going for $35, with $120 tickets discounted to $50, and $175 seats down to $72.
Despite the site telling customers that &#8220;tickets are selling fast!&#8221; with &#8220;limited time remaining,&#8221; it appears that less than 450 discounted tickets have actually been sold
A Groupon deal for the Clinton&#8217;s talk is for the liberal stronghold of Los Angeles where one would imagine the political power couple should be able to pull in the numbers.
</blockquote>
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, a liberal and longtime supporter of both Clintons, last week mocked the pathetic speaking tour.
&#8220;I&#8217;m looking around Scotiabank Arena, the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and it&#8217;s a depressing sight. It&#8217;s two-for-the-price-of-one in half the arena. The hockey rink is half curtained off, but even with that, organizers are scrambling at the last minute to cordon off more sections behind thick black curtains, they say due to a lack of sales. I paid $177 weeks in advance. (I passed on the pricey meet-and-greet option.) On the day of the event, some unsold tickets are slashed to single digits,&#8221; Dowd wrote.
&#8220;I get reassigned to another section as the Clintons&#8217; audience space shrinks. But even with all the herding, I&#8217;m still looking at large swaths of empty seats &#8212; and I cringe at the thought that the Clintons will look out and see that, too. It was only four years ago, after all, that Canadians were clamoring to buy tickets to see the woman who seemed headed for history. I can&#8217;t fathom why the Clintons would make like aging rock stars and go on a tour of Canada and the U.S. at a moment when Democrats are hoping to break the stranglehold of their cloistered, superannuated leadership and exult in a mosaic of exciting new faces.&#8221;
Ouch.
And Dowd concluded with this: &#8220;The Clintons refuse to be discarded. It has been their joint project for half a century to be at the center of the public scene and debate. The way that the whole thing came crashing down in 2016 is too hard for them to bear. They would like to rewrite the ending, but there is no way to do that.&#8221;

Bill And Hillary Clinton Resort To Using Groupon To Sell Tickets For Speaking Tour

Bill Clinton

Hillary Clinton

Yes, people, the day is coming, and it&#8217;s coming fast: We&#8217;re almost done for good with Bill and Hillary Clinton.
How can we be sure, you ask? Here&#8217;s how: Tickets to see them live and hear them blab about their lives are selling for the cost of a Big Mac meal at McDonald&#8217;s.
Not enough proof? Well, there&#8217;s this, too: New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is finally sick of them.
The former first couple opened a 13-city speaking tour late last month with a premiere event in Toronto (why they think anyone in Canada wants to hear them whine about Hillary&#8217;s crushing defeat in the 2016 presidential election is anybody&#8217;s guess). They pulled just 3,000 people to an arena that seats 19,000.
Then they took their road show, &#8220;An Evening With the Clintons,&#8221; to Montreal, but they fared little better (and not for lack of trying: In a case of classic Clinton pandering, each said that Canada was superior to America).
And things kept getting worse. Ticket prices for their event in Texas plunged to just $6. Seems no one is interested in hearing them tell &#8220;stories and inspiring anecdotes that shaped their historic careers in public service, while also discussing issues of the day and looking toward the future,&#8221; which a press release promised.
Why are Bill and Hillary traveling the country charging people top dollar to hear them bloviate? It&#8217;s not the money: The couple made $250 million in the 15 years after Bubba left office (and Hillary made bank selling access &#8212; and favors &#8212; while she was secretary of state).
No, they just want &#8230; to be loved. Like poor Charles Foster Kane, they just need to be loved. &#8220;That&#8217;s why he went into politics. It seems we weren&#8217;t enough. He wanted all the voters to love him, too,&#8221; Jedediah Leland says in the classic Orson Welles movie.
But one person has fallen decidedly out of love with the Clintons. Dowd has finally had enough of the self-serving couple and last week called them out, calling them &#8220;shockingly un-self-aware.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;m looking around Scotiabank Arena, the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and it&#8217;s a depressing sight. It&#8217;s two-for-the-price-of-one in half the arena. The hockey rink is half curtained off, but even with that, organizers are scrambling at the last minute to cordon off more sections behind thick black curtains, they say due to a lack of sales. I paid $177 weeks in advance. (I passed on the pricey meet-and-greet option.) On the day of the event, some unsold tickets are slashed to single digits,&#8221; Dowd writes.
&#8220;I get reassigned to another section as the Clintons&#8217; audience space shrinks. But even with all the herding, I&#8217;m still looking at large swaths of empty seats &#8212; and I cringe at the thought that the Clintons will look out and see that, too. It was only four years ago, after all, that Canadians were clamoring to buy tickets to see the woman who seemed headed for history. I can&#8217;t fathom why the Clintons would make like aging rock stars and go on a tour of Canada and the U.S. at a moment when Democrats are hoping to break the stranglehold of their cloistered, superannuated leadership and exult in a mosaic of exciting new faces.&#8221;
So here&#8217;s the math: It&#8217;s Christmas 2018. Come January, the 2020 presidential contest begins in earnest. Democrats take over the House (look for endless investigations into President Trump), and the loudest, most partisan in the party will rise to the top. Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Donna Brazile said Tuesday that there might be upward of 30 people running for the Democratic nomination.
Now, make no mistake: Hillary will milk 2019 for all it&#8217;s worth. She&#8217;ll try to make it look like she might &#8212; just might &#8212; jump in for one last run. Some liberal supporters in the mainstream media (not Dowd, apparently), will push another run by the two-time loser. And she&#8217;ll use her dwindling clout to make even more money. (How much is enough with these people?)
But she won&#8217;t run, and she knows she won&#8217;t. Still, the pair just can&#8217;t bear to go away. Dowd summed up why: &#8220;The Clintons refuse to be discarded. It has been their joint project for half a century to be at the center of the public scene and debate. The way that the whole thing came crashing down in 2016 is too hard for them to bear. They would like to rewrite the ending, but there is no way to do that.&#8221;
No, there&#8217;s not. And Bill and Hillary are about to go away forever. The day is nearly here.
* A version of this article ran previously in The Washington Times.

Bill And Hillary Clinton Are About To Go Away Forever

Why do we seem to be constantly at each other&#8217;s throats when discussing politics in America today? Andrew Klavan contends that the media plays a large part in that, and all that rancor might be just the way they like it.
&#8220;I think the reason we can&#8217;t talk is because the media stands between Left and Right, and 8% of the people, the radical left, are running 85% of the media,&#8221; The Daily Wire podcast host explained on Monday&#8217;s episode of &#8220;The Andrew Klavan Show.&#8221; &#8220;By the media, I don&#8217;t just mean however you&#8217;re getting your news, I&#8217;m talking about Hollywood, I&#8217;m talking about social media. It was amazing to watch social media this weekend; I think a lot of people just took the weekend off and weren&#8217;t on it, so the only people who were left were angry people, people who always say &#8216;I&#8217;m so outraged!&#8217; It was endless, and I started to crack up after a while. It was kind of funny.&#8221;
Klavan also criticized New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd for calling President Donald Trump the &#8220;real American Psycho&#8221; and Republicans not supporting the White House &#8220;malefactors.&#8221;
&#8220;What she&#8217;s saying here is just because other Republicans attack Trump, doesn&#8217;t mean we should like other Republicans; they all stink,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;The point she is making is hate Trump, but don&#8217;t forget to hate all the other Republicans as well. At least that&#8217;s honest, they&#8217;re not saying, &#8216;Oh it started with Trump&#8217; &#8212; they&#8217;re saying we&#8217;ve hated you all this time &#8212; it never occurs to her that maybe Trump is a reaction to all that hatred she was pouring on people.&#8221;
Video and transcript below:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe loading="lazy" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="409" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dWDAWB_9xh4" width="728"></iframe></div>
<blockquote>
I think the reason we can&#8217;t talk is because the media stands between Left and Right, and 8 percent of the people &#8211; the radical left &#8211; are running 85 percent of the media. By the media, I don&#8217;t just mean however you&#8217;re getting your news, I&#8217;m talking about Hollywood, I&#8217;m talking about social media. It was amazing to watch social media this weekend, I think a lot of people just took the weekend off and weren&#8217;t on it, so the only people who were left were angry people, people who always say &#8220;I&#8217;m so outraged!&#8221; It was endless, and I started to crack up after a while, it was kind of funny.
The University of Pennsylvania did a study where they came up with this: &#8220;using less social media than you normally do leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness.&#8221; These effects are particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed when they came into this study. Now, I&#8217;m always a little leery of studies like this, and I&#8217;ll tell you why. Because in America, we don&#8217;t believe in limits. It never occurs to anybody saying &#8220;yeah, use social media, but don&#8217;t use it all the time, don&#8217;t use it every minute.&#8221; They do these studies of video games, and they&#8217;ll say &#8220;you know, 23 hours of video games a day makes you violent.&#8221; 23 hours of doing anything a day would make you violent after a while. It&#8217;s addiction that makes people crazy. Some of this stuff is addictive, it is built to be addictive, and one of the reasons it&#8217;s addictive is because it touches off outrage. Outrage feels good. I always tell you, &#8220;anger is the devil&#8217;s cocaine&#8221; &#8211; it feels good, it feels righteous. There is such a thing as righteous anger, but anger is never righteous itself, and that&#8217;s what it feels like. Even if you&#8217;re celebrating Veterans Day, you&#8217;ll hear people say &#8220;well we celebrate it, but they don&#8217;t, I&#8217;m outraged!&#8221;
All of this, of course, circles on Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is an obstreperous character. He is not the most polite person in the world. Why do I complain about this? I complain about it because I know there&#8217;ll be a price. There was a price to pay in this last election, it&#8217;s now being shown that we may lose 40 seats in Congress, which is not a blue wave, but it&#8217;s a bigger wave than it was. Why? Why when everything&#8217;s going well? It&#8217;s all about his impoliteness, it&#8217;s all about the way he appears to people. But as I keep saying, it didn&#8217;t start with Trump. That is an important thing for understanding.
Maureen Dowd, who I&#8217;ve always maintained some kind of vestigial respect for, because she stood up during the Clinton&#8217;s scandals, where Clinton was diddling his intern young enough to be his daughter &#8211; and she said &#8220;No! It&#8217;s not alright.&#8221; She actually stood up for her beliefs, which I respected. She got a lot of flak, I think she got death threats from the Left. So she writes this column in The New York Times, a former newspaper:
Maureen Dowd: &#8220;Who&#8217;s the real American Psycho? Donald Trump is such a menace, that it&#8217;s tempting to cheer any vituperative critic, and grab any handy truncheon, but villainizing Trump should not entail sanitizing other malefactors.&#8221;
What she&#8217;s saying here is just because other Republicans attack Trump, doesn&#8217;t mean we should like other Republicans, they all stink. The point she is making is hate Trump, but don&#8217;t forget to hate all the other Republicans as well. At least that&#8217;s honest, they&#8217;re not saying &#8220;oh it started with Trump&#8221; &#8211; they&#8217;re saying we&#8217;ve hated you all this time &#8211; it never occurs to her that maybe Trump is a reaction to all that hatred she was pouring on people. This is the way we get this stuff. When I say what&#8217;s the problem, why can&#8217;t we talk when conservatives and liberals need each other? We need liberals to tell us &#8220;oh this guy isn&#8217;t being served&#8221;, we need conservatives to say &#8220;alright let&#8217;s solve that problem, but let&#8217;s solve it in our traditional constitutional way.&#8221; We need that, that is the dance of progress. It entails argument, but it doesn&#8217;t have to entail hatred.
What&#8217;s getting in the way? It&#8217;s that day after day, speaking to their base, telling them &#8220;don&#8217;t forget, it&#8217;s not enough hate, it&#8217;s good that you hate Donald Trump, but you&#8217;re not hating enough, you&#8217;re not outraged enough, you&#8217;re not mean enough.&#8221; That&#8217;s how we get this stuff, like what&#8217;s happening to Tucker Carlson.
</blockquote>
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Klavan: The Media Admits It: They Hate All Republicans.

Andrew Klavan

Conservatism

Donald Trump

Republican Party

Trump Administration

As Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro justifiably pointed out on Twitter, leftists enraged at New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd showed exactly how ridiculous they are, and how profound their worship of Barack Obama really is:
<div class="media_embed">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Hilarious that lefties are mad at <a href="https://twitter.com/NYTimesDowd">@NYTimesDowd</a> for calling Obama &#8220;Barry,&#8221; ignoring that she called him one of the &#8220;purest brands&#8221; in DC.
&#8212; Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) <a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/752251560436965376">July 10, 2016</a></blockquote>
</div>
In a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/the-clinton-contamination.html?_r=0">column</a> published by the The New York Times on Saturday, Dowd had the temerity to refer to President Barack Obama as &#8220;Barry,&#8221; igniting a firestorm of criticism from leftists enraged by her cavalier and un-deferential attitude toward their beloved icon.
Predictably, leftists were more upset by the fact that Dowd used the intimate diminutive of Obama&#8217;s first name than the fact that she bemoaned how the Clintons, whom she described as the &#8220;Tom and Daisy Buchanan of American politics,&#8221; had tarnished the reputation of not only her icon Obama, but also those other faux naïfs, James Comey and Loretta Lynch.
Dowd moaned, &#8220;In a mere 11 days, arrogant, selfish actions by the Clintons contaminated three of the purest brands in Washington &#8212; Barack Obama, James Comey and Loretta Lynch &#8212; and jeopardized the futures of Hillary&#8217;s most loyal aides.&#8221; The idea that Obama, Lynch and Comey are innocents whose moral purity is demonstrable is laughable, but that statement did not engender the ire from leftists.
Instead, they focused on this tidbit: &#8220;But in the end, Hillary&#8217;s goo got on Obama anyhow. On Tuesday, after Comey managed to make both Democrats and Republicans angry by indicting Clinton politically but not legally, Barry and Hillary flew to Charlotte, N.C., for their first joint campaign appearance.&#8221;
&#8220;Barry.&#8221; That&#8217;s what elicited the vitriol from leftists:
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<a href="https://twitter.com/NYTimesDowd">@NYTimesDowd</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes">@nytimes</a> I really hate it when you refer to Obama as Barry. I stop reading. it&#8217;s not a good tactic. I once liked your columns
&#8212; Clodagh Smith (@Clodagh831) <a href="https://twitter.com/Clodagh831/status/751864468414529536">July 9, 2016</a></blockquote>
</div>

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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/Clodagh831">@Clodagh831</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/NYTimesDowd">@NYTimesDowd</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes">@nytimes</a> Calling Obama &#8220;Barry&#8221; is tantamount to calling him &#8220;Boy.&#8221;
&#8212; Elizabeth Graham J D (@Ms_Liz2) <a href="https://twitter.com/Ms_Liz2/status/751868793622827008">July 9, 2016</a></blockquote>
</div>

<div class="media_embed">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/Clodagh831">@Clodagh831</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Ms_Liz2">@Ms_Liz2</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/NYTimesDowd">@NYTimesDowd</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes">@nytimes</a> I agree with this. I don&#8217;t appreciate the pointed disrespect or think it helps credibility.
&#8212; Chandra Greer (@GREERChicago) <a href="https://twitter.com/GREERChicago/status/752130004226539520">July 10, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/NYTimesDowd">@NYTimesDowd</a> Outrageous to refer to Pres. Obama as Barry. You should apologize. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PresidentObamaNotBarry?src=hash">#PresidentObamaNotBarry</a>
&#8212; Jim Watson (@jimj02155) <a href="https://twitter.com/jimj02155/status/752149855569645568">July 10, 2016</a></blockquote>
</div>

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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/NYTimesDowd">@NYTimesDowd</a> Maureen calling Obama &#8216;Barry&#8217;, her version of calling him &#8216;boy&#8217;, ur a disgrace
&#8212; Louis (@nylgk) <a href="https://twitter.com/nylgk/status/752078956338286592">July 10, 2016</a></blockquote>
</div>

<div class="media_embed">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/NYTimesDowd">@NYTimesDowd</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes">@nytimes</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/peterdaou">@peterdaou</a> His name is President Barack Obama! Get it straight! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PresidentObamaNotBarry?src=hash">#PresidentObamaNotBarry</a>
&#8212; SBP (@fonda_mae) <a href="https://twitter.com/fonda_mae/status/752140250974154753">July 10, 2016</a></blockquote>
</div>
<blockquote>
The idea that Obama, Lynch and Comey are innocents whose moral purity is demonstrable is laughable, but that statement did not engender the ire from leftists.

</blockquote>
#PresidentObamaNotBarry trended on Twitter in response to Dowd.
Calling Obama &#8220;Barry&#8221; is nothing new for Dowd; what these leftists didn&#8217;t realize is that Dowd called Obama &#8220;Barry&#8221; six times in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/opinion/sunday/dowd-barrys-war-within.html">column</a> she wrote for the Times as early as 2013.
Of course, what the leftists also don&#8217;t realize, or refuse to admit, is that Dowd&#8217;s reference to Obama as Barry is not an accurate reflection of the reverence in which she holds him; calling him, Lynch and Comey the &#8220;purest brands&#8221; is about as sycophantic as one can get.

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Maureen Dowd

‘Limousine Liberals And Hollywood Wh*ring’: Famed NYT Columnist On Obama B-Day Bash

Bill And Hillary Clinton Resort To Using Groupon To Sell Tickets For Speaking Tour

Bill And Hillary Clinton Are About To Go Away Forever

Klavan: The Media Admits It: They Hate All Republicans.

Leftists ENRAGED After NYT Columnist Dowd Calls Obama ‘Barry.’ There’s One Thing They Missed.