By PETER S. FERRARA
Columnist
—
Tacky. The word means showy, gaudy, characterized by a lack of good breeding, and in just plain poor taste. It was the first word that popped into my head when I heard that the Clintons -- former President Bill and Secretary of State Hillary -- were about to spend between two and four million dollars on their daughter Chelsea's wedding.
Why is this a tacky thing to do? They've got the money. She's their only child. Why shouldn't they spend a few million bucks? I'll tell you why. We are living through the worst recession since the Great Depression. Tens of millions of Americans are struggling to make ends meet. They don't have jobs. They've lost their homes. They've watched whatever retirement plans some of them were trying to fund shrink away to next to nothing. We are mired in two wars in which mostly poor folks on all fronts are being killed. Our economy has been looted by greedy bankers and Wall Street financiers who placed their own profit ahead of the nation's well-being.
With all of that facing us, the Clintons have decided to just go ahead and have a wedding fit for a queen while many of their fellow countrymen and women and children are living like paupers. Tacky. I have tried very hard to believe that the Clintons represented something better than just being selfish rich people living in their elite world of special privilege. Given Bill's rough beginnings, I'd hoped he really was a Bubba and not just another Dubya. I hereby formally admit I was wrong. He and his wife are about to spend twenty to forty times what Dubya and Laura spent on Jenna's wedding. Jenna got married at the Bush family home in Crawford, Texas. But the Clinton's current home in Chappaqua, New York, wouldn't do. Chelsea has to get married at the former estate of John Jacob Astor the Fourth in Rhinebeck, New York. Tacky.
Another word that comes to mind is "optics," which in this case is how things look in the context in which they are viewed. And the optics of this wedding are just awful. That the Clintons could be so tone deaf, so indifferent to the way such extravagance appears in the midst of this country's economic woes, simply boggles this former supporter's mind. I'm sure Chelsea is a nice person. She has had to grow up under the glare of public scrutiny her parents' careers has brought down on her. It can't have been easy. But she's not a kid anymore. She is a woman of 30, highly educated, and certainly must know somewhere inside her what this wedding looks like to the have-not's who have to watch the spectacle unfold endlessly on the news and gossip magazine shows.
Try as I might, I just can't seem to grasp what the Clintons are thinking. Fiancee' Marc Mezvinsky and bride-to-be Chelsea have been friends for many years. They went to Stanford together. Marc is the son of two former members of Congress. His father was a successful money manager until he did five years for embezzlement. But the sins of the father should not be placed against the son, just as Bubba's peccadilloes shouldn't be heaped upon Chelsea.
Marc has done extremely well for himself as a hedge fund manager at Goldman Sachs. Wait a minute! Goldman Sachs? Hedge fund manager? Where have I heard those words before? Marc has definitely moved up from his cramped quarters at the school where Tiger Woods learned how to be a great dad and husband. Marc recently bought himself a nice pad in New York City for the bargain price of just four million dollars -- about what the wedding will cost according to some estimates. So I doubt the new Mr. and Mrs. Mezvinsky's will be dumpster diving for food any time soon.
Don't get me wrong, I am not prejudiced against rich people, although I often question how they acquired all that wealth. Didn't Oscar Wilde once say that behind every great fortune lies a great crime? But I really do wish the newlyweds a long and happy marriage. In time I will forget about this stupid wedding with all of its wretched excess at a time when the nation struggles so hard to make ends meet. The image I associate it with now -- Marie Antoinette dismissing the peasants of the French Revolution with the words "let them eat cake" -- will fade away as just another example of American tackiness. Marie was beheaded. Let's wish the newlyweds a far, far better fate.
For me, the lesson to be learned from this incredibly tacky wedding is: Lower your expectations. Hope for the best and expect the worst. And should the son or daughter of wealthy public figures ever do something selfless and sensible, I will be all the more pleased and surprised. So I raise my plastic glass of ginger ale and salute the newlyweds with the traditional Hebrew toast: Mazel Tov! Or as proud papa Bubba Bill might say: "Good luck, y'all!"
By the way, a friend who has been invited to Prince William's upcoming wedding tells me that the projected cost of that one is around twenty million dollars! So maybe I'm being too hard on the Clintons. Twenty million dollars? God save the queen! And may God help the rest of us!
