THE DIARY OF VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
WASHINGTON, D.C.
May 5, 2009
Hey, being vice president is f---ing cool! The Prez invited me out for some quality time—even though it was POTUS & VPOTUS (I love that acronym!), we were just two guys goin’ out for cheeseburgers. (By the way, none of the people who waited on us had Indian accents. I still don’t get why they gravitate toward 7-Elevens.) Anyway, we did some great male bonding today—for forty-five minutes or so I was able to forget all that Recovery Act gibberish I’m supposed to be tracking. And as I sat at that burger joint, watching this young, bright, nice-looking guy in shirtsleeves across from me, I felt vindicated. The kid didn’t so much as drip one drop of grease or Dijon mustard on himself! Hardly needed a napkin! I knew I was right when I said he is a “clean” African-American!
But that Michelle, she’s something else. We get back to the White House and she was on Barack like white on rice. I couldn’t hear much of what she was saying other than “I told you I wanted a double cheeseburger extra fried onions, you fool!” Man, she’s tough. Kind of like a black Hillary Clinton. I mean that in a good way.
Then my personal favorite: six weeks into the First Lady’s childhood obesity campaign, she and the girls headed to New York for spring break, and made headlines when they made a beeline to the legendary pizza joint Grimaldi’s. The Obamas and three school chums ordered four pies—no word on whether the sausage and pepperoni were low-fat varieties.
As usual with liberals, the rules and edicts they insist on saddling the “little people” with don’t apply to them. Remember, they’re special. They’re historic.
FOR THE OBAMAS, IT’S ALWAYS PERSONAL
George and Laura Bush were also extremely fit, but we weren’t subjected to a constant barrage of news stories and profiles featuring mind-numbing details of their exercise regimens. I had the grueling pleasure of mountain biking with President Bush a few times. For him it was about the personal challenge, camaraderie, and friendly competition—never about selling an image of himself to further a political goal.
With the First Lady’s battle against the bulge, there is more going on than meets the thigh. As with so much of what the Obamas advocate, their fitness and healthy eating push is one part federal boondoggle, one part vanity project. We the people are supposed to be thrilled to ride along on their ego trip, oohing and aahing about how they look, how they act, and just their overall awesomeness. By pushing stories about Mrs. Obama’s physical strength, her toned arms, and workout routines, her handlers were determined early on to establish her as an authority on health and fitness. That way, when the time came for her debut as policy advocate on these issues, it would seem to many like a natural fit because her credibility was already established. By that logic, anyone with a ThighMaster or Gold’s Gym membership—or snow shovel, for that matter—qualifies as an expert.
THE DIARY OF FIRST-LADY-IN-WAITING MICHELLE OBAMA
CHICAGO
November 19, 2008
Another grueling day: media interviews, hair styled, wardrobe review, talked for a few minutes to the girls. But the AP finally caught up to most every other media outlet and ran a great piece about my arms. (Yeah, they mentioned Smokey’s workouts, too— but I’m ticked that they didn’t even drop in the detail Desiree leaked about how he’s still sneakin’ cigs with Rahm!) Wait until they see the designer one-of-a-kind dresses that Desiree has lined up in my closet—every single one of them sleeveless! A plum one for the Joint Session of Congress speech in February. A fuschia one for the Vogue cover. I can really get used to this part of being First Lady.
I did tell Desiree that under no circumstances do I want the public to know what she calls my biceps, although “Brad” and “Angelina” are the perfect nicknames! (After all, only Brangelina gets covered more than these sleek, sensuous lovelies!) These reporter fools are so easy to lead around by the noses. They’re all writing up a storm about how we are fitness role models and such. I hear freaking CNN is doing a segment titled “How to Get Michelle Obama’s Toned Arms”! Hilarious! (The young lady reporter was begging the press office for some scrap about how I manage to look so gorgeous, so I told Cornell to give her a few of our secrets. Hell, after nearly two thousand personal training sessions together since 1997, we have this down to a science.)
But honestly, average citizens shouldn’t get their hopes up. It’s going to take a lot more than some hammer curls and tricep pull-downs to look as good as me! After all, as Mama always says, I started with a perfect foundation!
GOVERNMENT, THE ULTIMATE “PERSONAL TRAINER”
What the Obamas get wrong on fitness and health care is what they always get wrong. Like all left-wingers, they believe that for every problem there is a government solution. (Remember, as Rahm Emanuel famously said, “Never let a crisis go to waste”—or, as the case may be, “waist.”)
On February 9, 2010, Michelle Obama launched her much-hyped anti-obesity initiative, called “Let’s Move!” which was orchestrated with the planning and precision of the D-day landing. Cabinet secretaries, congressional leaders, celebrities, star athletes, business leaders, and select schoolchildren were brought in as human props to mask the fact that this was yet another heavyweight body slam by the nanny state. Mrs. Obama marshaled the full force of the White House, complete with an executive order signed by the president to “create a ninety-day plan that allows optimal coordination as we move forward.” And, of course, since Democrats can’t breathe without spending billions in tax dollars, the Obama administration also asked Congress for $10 billion over ten years to improve the quality of school lunches and breakfasts.
Of course, congressional authorization was a mere formality. Who, after all, would deny Michelle? Even as the president’s own approval ratings tanked, hers remained enviably high. So whatever Sleeveless wants, Sleeveless gets.
THE DIARY OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE
March 2, 2010
Now I’ve had it. This “Let’s Move!” sideshow of Miche’s is really starting to cramp my style. The press is having a field day with the results of my medical checkup. How can someone with my stellar physique have elevated cholesterol?! I don’t believe those numbers. Who did the blood testing—Rasmussen? And then to add insult to injury, they’re getting on me for eating a little fried chicken and mac & cheese at Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room in Savannah today. I told the reporters not to tell Michelle— the last thing I need is another lecture from her. Man, they usually keep my secrets, but not today.
Of course, liberal elites are loath to admit that anything they do is overtly political: “This isn’t about politics . . . I’m talking about common-sense steps we can take in our families and communities to help our kids lead active, healthy lives,” the First Lady said on February 9, 2010, when she launched her “Let’s Move” initiative in the state dining room.
Any time the Obamas say, “It’s not about politics,” it’s definitely about politics. The First Lady clearly believes in a government-managed, top-down approach to pretty much every issue facing America. And no, I was not dissuaded of this notion by Mrs. Obama’s interview with Newsweek editor John Meacham (March 17, 2010), where she said that government cannot mandate healthy eating: “You can’t tell people what to do in their own homes, nor should you.” If she really meant that, of course, she would not be using the power of Congress, the White House, and HHS to help her with her pet project. Her approach to everything is statist. “[We] need to make sure that we pass legislation that makes sense, that sets clear basic nutritional guidelines, not just in the school lunch lines, but in the vending machines and a la carte lines,” she told Newsweek. So much for not being able to legislate healthy eating.
So if we have too many fat people in America, it’s up to the Obamas and their elite friends to force-feed us their views and policies on nutrition, exercise, and healthy living. And when Michelle barked, “Let’s Move!” it wasn’t just government ty
pes that stood at attention. American corporations and professional associations did, too. Their eagerness to “cooperate” with the First Lady, like the hospital groups and drug companies that leapt to work with President Obama on health care, seemed counterintuitive. After all, the Obama administration wants to control them, and dictate the terms of their corporate existence.
Consider Mrs. Obama’s speech on March 16, 2010, to the Grocery Manufacturers Association, where she basically ordered the companies in attendance to shape up or else: “We need you not to just tweak around the edges, but entirely rethink the products you are offering, the information that you provide about these products, and how you market those products to our children.” Look at the language—“entirely rethink the products you are offering.” The implicit threat is there—do this now, or get ready to deal with a raft of new federal regulations. And if that weren’t intrusive enough, she described her own version of The Price Is Right, intoning “there needs to be a serious industry-wide commitment to providing the healthier foods parents are looking for at prices they can afford.” Mrs. Obama is not only going to dictate ingredients but also prices? There’s a place where that approach to governance is very popular—it’s called Venezuela.
Sadly, not one executive from Coca-Cola, Kraft, or any of the other big food manufacturers had the guts to stand up and question this excessive governmental interference. In fact, not only did no one from the food industry publicly resist the warnings of Mrs. Obama, but the food business sycophants lined up. The American Beverage Association promised new calorie labeling. Major food suppliers pledged to cut sugar, salt, and fat in school cafeterias and offer healthy alternatives. Pepsi announced it was pulling its soda from schools worldwide. Even Burger King pledged its support. My personal favorite: the American Academy of Pediatrics urged its physician-members to regularly check the Body Mass Index (BMI) for children two years of age and older. Two-year-olds?! Tubby toddlers, beware!
SELL THE AGENDA, USE THE CHILDREN
“A couple of years ago—you’d never know it by looking at her now—Malia was getting a little chubby,” President-elect Obama said, according to ABC News. It seems he then gave his wife a little push to do something about it, which she did.
THE DIARY OF FIRST GRANDMOTHER MARIAN ROBINSON
THE WHITE HOUSE
April 12, 2009
I liked the idea of moving out of Chicago for a while, but living full-time at the White House with President Prissy is becoming less and less attractive to me. I went to the dentist today and picked up a November 2008 copy of Parenting magazine in the waiting room. As if I need to read another interview with Barack and Michelle! How dare Barack tell them that my granddaughter was ever “chubby”? And I can’t believe that Michelle took him seriously. The girls are not now and never were fat. And excuse me, but Barack wasn’t exactly a featherweight in some of his kiddie photos!
At dinner tonight, Barack asked if I could pass the salt, and I said, “Congratulations!” “For what?” he said. “For asking me to pass the salt without your teleprompter!” He got all snippy with me after that, but he was just grouchy because no amount of salt could make that bland, free-range, skinless chicken dish tasty. Sasha just pushed it around her plate. Malia ate a few bites but was miserable. The girls begged me to get Sam and the crew to whip up a pepperoni pizza for them after dinner. I had it delivered up to the third floor, they snuck up before bed, and we each gobbled down a few pieces. Take that, Mr. and Mrs. Party Pooper!
So Michelle marched her daughters into the pediatrician’s office. According to the First Lady, he “was concerned something was getting off-balance” with the girls’ weight. The doctor “cautioned me that I had to take a look at my own children’s BMI,” she remarked, adding, “In my eyes, I thought my children were perfect. I didn’t see the changes.” Little by little, she changed her daughters’ diets—less fruit juice, more water; smaller portions; apple slices in their lunch boxes; bright veggies at the dinner table; and no TV during the week. (Call the Nobel committee! He gets the Peace Prize for not being George Bush and she gets the Peas Prize for taking the fat out of our land.) Then, as Mrs. Obama tells it, at the next checkup, their pediatrician was astounded by the change in the girls. In other words, thanks to Mom’s ingenious nutrition plan, the girls had avoided waddling farther down the road to fatdom.
This set off a flurry of debates on the Internet and cable television, with some health advocates questioning whether the president and First Lady were actually doing harm to the body image of girls across America by invoking their perfectly fit girls as examples. Paul Campos, writing in the New Republic, expressed the disgust many people were feeling:
[O]ne wonders if the First Lady has considered that putting her pre-teen daughters on diets is far more likely to make them eating disordered rather than permanently thin. (If the kind of obsessive monitoring of food and activity choices Obama recommends to parents actually “worked,” there would be almost no fat kids in America today, at least in the middle and upper class families where Obama’s anxieties about her daughters’ weight are all too common).
Also, by invoking their daughters’ weight travails to justify their latest adventure in nanny state politics, the Obamas are violating their own cardinal rule that children of politicians should be off-limits. Candidate Obama made the point on more than one occasion, including in defense of Bristol Palin: “I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. . . .” In February 2010, Michelle Obama told CBS News that when it comes to being with their girls, the White House is a “politics-free zone.” The instinct to keep children out of the messiness of politics is, of course, right. But how exactly is telling the story of the chubster daughters shielding them from the public glare? Once again, the rules the Obamas want everyone else to live by don’t apply to them.
THE DIARY OF FIRST GRANDMOTHER MARIAN ROBINSON
THE WHITE HOUSE
February 17, 2010
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times—Michelle really is the one who shoulda been president. Has President Spindly Legs looked at his numbers lately? Goodness gracious, Iran’s Mahmoud Shrimpy is more popular here than he is!
Then Barack has the nerve to tell some reporter that I am “becoming quite the lady about town”! Why doesn’t he keep his uppity nose in his own business? Even au pairs get nights off every now and then—and by the way, they get paid more than I do . . . which is easy since I get paid with only the privilege of living with Mr. Historic.
Oh, and His Highness is supposedly miffed because I told the same reporter that I don’t eat dinner with them every night because I want to give them their “private family time.” The truth is, he bugs the living daylights out of me with his cocky attitude about everything from politics to fitness! If I hear him bragging again about how he’s in much better shape than W was when he was president, I’m gonna lose it!
“Reggie says my calves are getting stronger.” “Reggie says my golf swing is improving.” “Reggie says my ab workout rocks.” You know what Reggie should also say? That you reek of cigs, Smokey! Or is half a pack a day also recommended in the Body by Reggie workout DVD?
YES WE CAN . . . DICTATE EVERYTHING
No matter how “down home” the president and First Lady try to act or sound, they are, at their core, elitist snobs. Maybe they weren’t always this way, but somewhere along the line they both developed a metropolitan snootiness that they just can’t shake. Don’t be fooled by the phony southern accent that Mr. Obama puts on when he’s “fired up” in front of an audience outside the Washington-New York-Los Angeles orbit. Don’t be taken in by Mrs. Obama’s “I-was-once-struggling-out-there-just-like-you” charade. Remember, she’s still the woman who, during the campaign, said, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” And he is the same fellow who remarked that bitter Pennsylvania voters “cling to their gu
ns or religion.” The bottom line is: they are both disdainful of NASCAR voters, who might like to kick back with a bowl of ice cream or a beer at the end of a hard day.
This condescension was on full display when the First Lady headed to Philadelphia to promote Let’s Move! on February 16, 2010. It was there that she launched her ground war against “food deserts.” The Let’s Move! website defines a “food desert” as a place where a grocery store is more than a mile away. (Gee, to think I didn’t even know that I grew up in a “food desert” in Glastonbury, Connecticut!) The First Lady managed to bring not one, but two cabinet secretaries with her to the Fresh Grocer store in North Philadelphia. (USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack makes sense—but Treasury Secretary Geithner?)
The $15 million store had opened recently in a poor area in North Philadelphia, with money from the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative. The aim of the public-private partnership is to give low-income areas easier access to grocery stores. Isn’t obesity mostly a behavioral and lifestyle-related problem? Is it really an issue of people’s proximity to “healthy food”? And as to the criticisms that have been leveled at grocery stores for supposedly “abandoning” inner-city neighborhoods across urban America—does the First Lady ever consider the possibility that the grocery stores that closed in Detroit, Los Angeles, and Newark, etc., did so because they weren’t profitable? Or that the areas had become so crime-ridden that doing business there became untenable?
The Obama Diaries Page 16
