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Friday, August 22, 2008

That's rich

So, McCain has many houses. His campaign says he has four homes. The Obama campaign says he has seven.  

McCain's campaign countered with charges that, while Obama has but one home, it's a mansion with four fireplaces and a wine cellar.

So we've move on from the elite wars -- elite, readers say, is someone who thinks he's better than you -- to rich, when they were long twinned. Now, it's a dissing war into who is more privileged.

What constitutes rich, especially when rich people never describe themselves as such but merely as "comfortable?"

Does one house with four fireplaces trump having four, or seven, residences? McCain's primary residences are in Phoenix where fireplaces are useless, and a Washington, D.C. condo (ditto). Then again, plenty of beach homes are going up with multiple fireplaces.

 So are fireplaces and wine cellars the new sign of luxury?

Obama's South Side Chicago home does have four fireplaces. It was built 96 years ago, when people needed fireplaces, especially in Chicago.

If you have a Weber, does that count as a second fireplace? Also, if you store a few bottles of $8 malbecs in the basement, plus the odd bottle of vermouth for visiting relatives, does that make it a wine cellar?

 
Posted by Karen Heller @ 10:47 AM  Permalink | 11 comments
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 5:43 PM, 08/22/2008
    How many houses do Bruce Toll and Brian Tierney have?
    — Axxel
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 9:34 AM, 08/23/2008
    For someone who scratches out a blog every couple weeks, they sure are meaningless.
    — ObamaHATER
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 12:20 PM, 08/23/2008
    JFK and FDR. How many houses for those landed gentries? How about Alan Iverson? Or maybe Pat Croce? Bread and Circus for the masses. I shudder to think of the ongoing question that the sage Ben Franklin posed, as he was leaving the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia years past, in order to answer a woman's question about our new country. "A Republic Madam. If you can keep it."
    — joedog
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  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 3:46 PM, 08/25/2008
    Being rich merely means that you had the personal financial wherewithal to bankroll all the campaigns that led up to your presidential campaign (as well as your presidential campaign, just ask Hillary). Why should that bother anyone's Democratic sensibilities? (LOL) Anyway, the richest candidate from each party did not win either party's nod, so this only seems an issue to the very rich Reverend Lovejoy.
    — bobcitydoc
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:30 AM, 08/26/2008
    Being rich only matters when candidates (and BOTH parties are guilty) attempt to portray themselves as having blue-collar roots...when in reality, it's often blue-blood roots. While both presidential candidates may have had humble beginninngs, neither has had to pump their own gas for some time. It's like Springsteen; at one time his working class music really rang true...not so much anymore.
    — chazzbo
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 8:57 AM, 08/27/2008
    Obama's home may be large with four fireplaces, but it's on the South Side, which is not exactly as desirable an area as Michigan Ave. in Chicago.
    — Jerome
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 10:10 AM, 08/28/2008
    We officially derailed the minute media began assessing candidate's chances for success based on their ability to bankroll fundraisers as opposed to the message they carried. The race for each party's nominations was doomed as soon as the news channels happily proclaimed that Obama and McCain raised more money than their opponoents. Nobody cared about the message then. We only have ourselves to blame for the ridiculous link between size of wallets vs political success.
    — opinion8td


11 comments
About Karen Heller
This week Karen Heller is live-blogging the Republican convention in true blogger style - at home, surfing the Web and watching TV. She's covered five other conventions. Three were Republican, two were Democratic. Read all of Populist here.

Karen Heller has interviewed Philip Roth and Zsa Zsa Gabor, spent time with Pink and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the celebrated and the exemplary unsung. She's covered Miss America and political conventions. She's been a provocative voice at The Inquirer for nearly 20 years, garnering awards for criticism, feature writing and investigative reporting, and was a finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in commentary.

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