Sender: Beyonce Knowles.
Subject: I Usually Don't Email You. (I, Beyonce, am letting you know right off the bat that emailing common people is beneath me. Consider yourself blessed.)
Message:
Karen --
I usually don't email you (hey-- that's the title of my next hit single!) -- but I have an amazing invitation I have to share. (it's actually just one more variation on the BamScam lottery, but please bear with the pretentious fun.)
Jay (I naturally assume you know who he is) and I will be meeting up ( way cooler than just meeting) with President Obama for an evening in NYC sometime soon. (I can't be bothered to give you the exact date, but Page Six* has the scoop.) And we want you to be there! (the exclamation point signifies that I/my minion is futilely straining to sound sincere.)
I've had the honor of meeting (not meeting up with) President Obama and the First Lady a few times -- and believe me -- it's an opportunity you don't want to miss. (Watching me, Beyonce, from your nosebleed seat in the last row, meeting up with them.)
Until midnight tonight, if you pitch in $15 or whatever you can, you'll be automatically entered to be flown out to join us. (and if Obama for America does happen to pick your name out of the hat, you will be carefully vetted by his operatives to make sure you're not a Code Pinko, have no missing teeth, or are otherwise unfit for our venue.)
Don't worry about the airfare and hotel, it's taken care of. (Phew....I was sweating bullets) And you can bring a guest. (who will also be rigorously vetted.)
But the countdown is on -- this opportunity ends at midnight:
(more linkage to givegivegivegivegivegive)
Can't wait to meet you!
Love,
B
At the very end, in extremely tiny print is the message that no purchase is necessary to be entered to win, because that would be illegal and unethical in the extreme. Offer void where prohibited and patent pending and we hope you rubes won't read this but givegivegivegivegive. No refunds, no exchanges. This offer cannot be sold to a Third Party because that would be a spoiler.
*Okay, here's the lowdown. The partay will be at Jay-Z's 40/40 Club on Sept. 18, and with any luck, the Sept. 17th anniversary of Occupy will still be going strong. Because, as you may remember, Jay-Z just dissed OWS, even though he'd made a bundle selling his special Occupy t-shirts. According to the Post,
We hear the event will be intimate and capped at 100 guests who will shell out $40,000 per ticket to dine with the commander-in-chief and hip-hop royals. Earlier the same day, Obama is scheduled to attend a reception where families can pose for a photo with him for a $12,500 contribution. A rep for Jay-Z’s West 25th Street club had no comment. We’re told the campaign stop will be Obama’s last in New York before the election. But does this mean the president will miss Jay’s concerts at Brooklyn's new Barclays Center at the end of September?Meanwhile, the New York Times is dishing on Bam's big-money donors and his failure to properly "stroke" them during appointments. Apparently, satisfying the thin-skinned elites is a tricky proposition.
Oh, and if you still had any illusions that President Obama is even remotely pro-labor, employees of Jay-Z's bar are suing him over wage and hour violations. At best, the lawsuit alleges, he cheated them out of overtime. At worst, he never gave them a paycheck at all. Even his defense lawyer is suing him for nonpayment. He got shut down by the health department for a day in July. In a separate case, the New York City Workers Compensation Board slapped him with a fine for not paying insurance for his own personal cooks and maids. Jay-Z reportedly earned $80 million last year.
But givegivegivegivegivegive. They'll fly you right out.
But givegivegivegivegivegive. They'll fly you right out.
I quoted a First Nations’ saying from memory (faulty) in a previous comment and wish to correct that, this time with a nod to the writer who brought the saying to my attention. This is the time and place to do it, for the spirit of the saying gives life to the Canadian ideal of egalitarianism, which ideal is a rebuke to the snobbishness revealed in Ms B’s pitch for Obama and the social disparities he sustains by deed and omission.
ReplyDeleteJohn Ralston Saul’s book, “A Fair Country: Telling Truths about Canada,” became a national bestseller in 2008. What binds a nation composed of minorities like Canada? The glue, according to Saul, is that spirit of egalitarianism. Below, a couple of paragraphs from his book setting up the saying in question.
Saul wrote his history, I am sure, out of concern that the elites of his own country were forgetting the wisdom counsels of its past, at risk of stumbling into the worship of idols demanding the sacrifice of whole populations. The US, a land of many idols today, is past forgetting its own wisdom counsels – or those of any other country. Hard to imagine how the US might ever again regain its balance, given the entrenched forces lined up to keep that from happening; but we keep hoping, even though our majorities, duped and self-deluded, keep applauding leaders of the narrowest view. Greed is good and screw "the other" – or at least look away.
Now, John Ralston Saul:
“ … the other way to read our [Canadian] civilization is to look for deeper foundations. It could be argued that the key moment in the creation of the idea of Canada was the gathering of thirteen hundred Aboriginal ambassadors from forty nations with the leaders of New France in 1701. The result was the Great Peace of Montreal. It was here that the indigenous Aboriginal ways of dealing with “the other” were consciously and broadly adopted as more appropriate than the European. Here the idea of future treaties was born. Here an approach was developed that would evolve into federalism….
“The idea … was to establish a continuous equilibrium, shared interests and shared welfare. The phrase in the Great Peace was that they would all ‘Eat from a Common Bowl.’ Which was to say that relationships were about looking after one another. This is the shared foundation for equalization payments and single-tier health care and public education. What I am describing here is … the origins of the mindset that made them possible.” (pp. 68-69)
It is the lopsided yet dominant mindset of individualism at all levels of US society, not just that of the elites, that pulls us down today, that keeps us from solidifying relationships that are “about looking after one another.”
While I also got this, it's funny I never received Beyonce's invite to "meet up" with Muammar Gaddafi at her special concert for his sociopathic son two years ago. Must have gone into my spam folder.
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