CNN is reporting that Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter and member of the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee, will endorse John McCain for president on Wednesday.
It sounds bad. And we all know the media will eat this up--all the better to revive the whole PUMA story line. But reading the story, I'm tempted to believe that the staff of The Onion has hacked into the CNN website.
The key passage is here:
“This is a hard decision for me personally because frankly I don't like him,” she said of Obama in an interview with CNN’s Joe Johns. “I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.”
Who is Lynn Forester de Rothschild? CNN says she is
the CEO of EL Rothschild, a holding company with businesses around the world. She is married to international banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. Forester is a member of the DNC’s Democrats Abroad chapter and splits her time living in London and New York.
Can she be serious? She's a member of one of the wealthiest international banking families in the world. She jets back & forth between London & NY (bet she misses the Concorde), and she even uses the article "de" in her name, which in France often indicates a claim to noble status. And she's calling Barack Obama, who was raised by a single mother who sometimes had to rely on foodstamps, who went to college on loans and scholarships, who worked for $12k a year as a community organizer after law school, spurning lucrative job offers, an "elitist"?
This has to be straight out of the Onion, right? Right? The wife of this man is calling Barack Obama an "elitist?"
If it's not a put-on, then words really have lost their meaning.
Of course, I can see why she'd support McCain. He understands the challenges she faces in keeping track of her far-flung properties, managing the servants, and dealing with the stresses of having so much money. And that tax cut of his will be so much better than that awful Barack fellow who will make her pay more taxes. Quelle impudence!
To be fair, she's probably been so busy jet-setting around the world, that she hasn't seen McCain's sleazy and deliberately dishonest campaign. Nor has she likely seen Sarah Palin lie again and again even after being busted by the press. She might be the only Democrat (besides Lieberman) left in the world who thinks McCain is trustworthy.
The sad part is, if Palin/McCain win (perish the thought), she won't have to endure the devastation they will unleash on this country. She'll just hop back across the pond and leave us poor plebians to suffer the consequences. And she can tell all her friends in London how affreux those arriviste Obamas are, while the extreme right takes over the Supreme Court, Social Security gets turned over to Wall Street, and we drill, baby, drill away at our coastlines.
On second thought, with Wall St. and the economy imploding, maybe it woudn't be such a bad thing to have a fabulously wealthy, jet-setting CEO from a major international banking family endorsing McCain. They really are his constituency after all. Kinda makes it clear who is fighting for average Americans in this election.
UPDATE: CNN now has a picture of Mrs. Sir Evelyn de Rothschild running with it's story (and what a surprise, it's on the front page along with another headline about how Palin is "recharging" the GOP ticket). It's worth a look. I'm betting those pearls aren't fakes. Seriously, if she bumped into Obama at a DNC fundraiser, she'd probably ask him to fetch her a cocktail & some hors d'oeuvres.
SNARK UPDATE: Perhaps I have this all wrong and Mrs. Sir Evelyn de Rotschild is really a covert DNC agent who is taking one for the team. The Dow is down 300 pts and here she is, the embodiment of wealth, privilege and international finance, coming out strong for McCain. It's like throwing a drowning man an anchor.
We, the common-folk of the USA, are forever in your worship's debt...