Pope Francis asked Bernie Sanders to meet him and Bernie said yes.
Kind of reminds me of that other time…
...when the Clintons asked Pope Francis to meet them and their 1% pals and Francis said no.
Yep. Back in September, during the Pope’s visit to the USA, the Clintons invited the Pope to attend their annual NYC charity gala for the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). But sadly for them, Pope Francis promptly declined.
You might think the famously social justice-minded pontiff would have jumped at the opportunity to spread his message to regular folks, folks like featured speakers Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, the CEO of Xerox and the President of the World Bank Group.
But for some obscure reason, he just wasn’t interested.
Well, maybe he just felt snubbed because Hillary Clinton had to pull out this year, since attending the Clinton family 1%-for-charity glitzy schmooze-fest might look bad politically. Ya think?
But you would have thought the Pope could get over Hillary’s absence and seize this golden opportunity to hobnob with upper-crust luminaries from the Hollywood A-list to the Forbes 500 Richest List. Funny thing though — CGI’s recent bad press had caused many of the rich and richer to pull out themselves. Facebook CEO Zuckerberg discovered he had a prior commitment. Elton John demurred, refusing to succumb to the lure of being presented a Major Award.
OK, you say, but this Pope is not about fortune and fame. Why not go in a low-key way to meet the people and talk serious matters in one of the CGI’s famous panel discussions of “experts”. Why, they’re even featuring a panel on Francis’s pet issue, economic inequality!
Well, things only got weirder on that undercard.
Yes, on the “economic inequality” panel the brain trust of the CGI decided to go with the ludicrous and pathetic spectacle of Nobel Prize-winning left economist Joseph Stiglitz [The Price of Inequality, Freefall on the finance crisis, Globalization and its Discontents], the dean of income inequality economists, talking to a panel of 3 millionaires with a combined net worth of over $21 million.
Totally makes sense, right? Let’s have a renowned economist talk about income inequality with two CEOs and an A-list Hollywood actress.
It went about as badly as would be expected. The moderator kicked things off by reminding the audience of entitled, privileged 1%-ers how great everything is going:
“In some ways the economic story of the last few decades has been a very positive one. There has been a tremendous amount of global growth!”
But yeah, inequality. The economic kind. It just keeps getting worse. Can’t imagine why. A few celebrity panels will do the trick, no? No?
.
To be fair, the moderator did allow the Nobel-prize winning economist Stiglitz the first speaking slot, giving him 5 minutes or so to explain his ideas. The moderator then immediately turned to Hollywood A-Lister Jessica Biel, who, in her $3,000 Dolce & Gabbana dress explained how Jessica Biel’s vanity charity was fighting inequality somehow.
After 5 stimulating minutes of that, conversation reverted back to the CEOs. But as soon as Biel had finished her 5-minute promo of her own charity, she got up and left the stage and the conference. Places to go, people to meet, you know.
Hilariously, the team videoing the panel tried to obscure the fact Biel was no longer there. After the first 10 minutes, the camera narrows its view and never pans back to her empty seat. And there’s no doubt her early exit was pre-planned, as they had her sit at the far end of the stage and speak out of order. Scan through the first 15 minutes or so of the video to watch the hi-jinks:
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The audience was not impressed, as CGI’s own internal review of its event showed. “Appalling” that Biel would get up and leave in such a manner, said one of CGI’s own employees charged with examining the highs and lows of the 2015 CGI gala and suggesting improvements.
Also instructive are the full comments of all the reviewing employees, freely available to the public in the leaked minutes of CGI’s lengthy 14-page policy advisor debriefing. It gets worse. Much worse:
“A lot of the content areas have been fatigued. Haiti, etc. doesn’t stimulate interest.“
Sorry Haiti. The upper crust thinks you’re freaking boring. No earthquakes? No Sean Penn anymore? Endemic poverty and exploitation that prior efforts marred by cynical business-friendly clientelism did nothing to address? Just not sexy. DULLSVILLE...bring on somewhere with more A-listers, better photo ops, and a 5-star resort with decent Champagne. There are standards, you know.
Even the CGI staff had to ponder the deeper point of it all:
“[I]s the gathering about celebrity events, commitments and some content, or do we actually want to have a view of life cycle of idea generation/partnership to commitment announcement?”
Indeed. Is the Clinton family vanity charity CGI more about networking than vague commitments or could it one day be about tracking commitments to actual measurable real-world consequences? Should we focus on schmoozing or Getting Things Done?
Not really too much of a mystery.
Still, the advisors conceded, there were some positives this year:
[A] lot of people commented on how good the food was.
Yes, the food.
It’s really hard to imagine why Pope Francis turned the Clintons’ invitation down.