J
JAMESBJOHNSON
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/wor...Obamas-150k-holiday--footed-U-S-taxpayer.html
WONDER WHAT HER CARBON FOOTPRINT IS!
WONDER WHAT HER CARBON FOOTPRINT IS!
Seduc1ove
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squarejohn
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I'll bet the housekeeping staff at that hotel gets stiffed.
R. Richard
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The tapas menu for the delegation included sea bass tartare, strawberry gazpacho and sardines, followed by a main course of lobster with seaweed risotto.
What about cake? If they're going to compare her with Marie Antoinette, there has to be cake!
What about cake? If they're going to compare her with Marie Antoinette, there has to be cake!
oggbashan
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That was a historic unsubstantiated slur on Marie Antoinette. She never said "Let them eat cake". Even 200 years after her death the lie still gets repeated.
But the rich and powerful still dine on expensive food that many people in their countries can't afford.
But forty pounds a head is comparable to the price many UK tourists would be willing to pay for a gourmet meal (as a change from Fish and Chips). The figures only sound excessive when multiplied by the number of people.
Og
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Boxlicker101
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I have no problem with the lady and her children and her posse taking an expensive holiday, but why should the taxpayers have to foot the bill, if that part is true. The comparison with Marie Antoinette was a valid one. She and other members of the royalty lived a life of excesses, while the French peasants literally starved. The situation is not that bad in the USA, but there is high unemployment and there are mortgages being foreclosed. 
This is really not good for the old PR. That is so, no matter who is paying for it.
ETA: The cost of the security is not such a big deal, because they would be around her anyhow. Did the American taxpayers pay to have her fly on Air Force II?
This is really not good for the old PR. That is so, no matter who is paying for it.
ETA: The cost of the security is not such a big deal, because they would be around her anyhow. Did the American taxpayers pay to have her fly on Air Force II?
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J
JAMESBJOHNSON
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My problem with her numerous vacations is taxpayer funded travel and accommodations for security and staff. Why is staff going along? And let Obama charter a jet for Michelle NOT provide her with AIR FORCE 2.
Seduc1ove
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R. Richard
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My understanding is that she and her husband were in a coach, making a run for the border when somebody recognized them. They were captured and she lost her head. HOWEVER, that's not definitive proof that she wasn't maybe a cake afficionado.
trysail
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According to Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette got a bad rap and it is extremely unlikely that she made the statement which too many people associate with her.
Beyond that, few realize that the meaning of the word cake has changed. In 1789, the word meant the crust (of a breadloaf) which was ordinarily cut off and discarded.
________________________
-Antonia Fraser
Marie Antoinette: The Journey
New York, 2001.
The next time someone observes, "Life isn't fair," or you're feeling sorry for yourself, think of poor Marie Antoinette. Born a Habsburg princess, her life ended after years of abuse and humiliation at the hands of a mob of savages. At the end, she was forced to change clothes and perform her bathroom functions in full view of her prison guards, prior to being carted to the guillotine. For her, death (really, a lynching) was a blessing. Contrary to popular belief, she did not originate the phrase and probably never said, "Let them eat cake" in response to reports of starvation in Paris.
From the Epilogue:
"The use of an animal or bird, who has the ills of the community heaped upon it before being driven out, has a long history in civilizations around the world. The name derived from the goat of the early Jews, described in Leviticus, presented alive before the Lord 'to make an atonement with Him' and then 'let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.' But there were many similar procedures in other societies, some of them involving women or children, or disabled people, nearly all of them ending in some unpleasant ritual death for the 'scapegoats,' who were stoned or hurled from a cliff, as a result of which the community was supposed to be purged of sins, or otherwise plague and pestilence."
squarejohn
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Cake for the people in the "food deserts."
Boxlicker101
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I can agree that MA never made the comment she is alleged to have made, or at least not for the same reason. The usual current definition of "cake" was also a definition 220 years ago, but there may have been other definitions that have fallen out of use.
I don't know that the lady was treated any worse than she deserved. She was part of the nobility that oppressed the people of Austria and France, and probably spent more money on a single dress or piece of jewelry than some of the people spent in a lifetime.
She was convicted in a revolutionary court and put to death in the method prescribed by law. The court may have been something of a kangaroo one, but she probably got no shorter shrift than peasants put to death for the pleasure of the king of France or the Austrian emperor.
I have no sympathy for her.
Handley_Page
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I have - to a degree.
All the Aristos of Europe treated the peasants in a bad way. Some rose and won - others didn't (at the time).
tried and condemned just because she was married to the King ?. No justice at all.
trysail
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"At ten o'clock Commissioner Manuel told the royal family that the Princesse de Lamballe had survived. He was wrong. It was the Marquise de Tourzel who was miraculously acquitted in front of the tribunal of revolutionaries, while Pauline was spirited away to safety by a mysterious English Good Samaritan. A different destiny was reserved for the Princesse. Brought before the tribunal, she refused to denounce the King and Queen. The Princesse, who had once been too sensitive to bear the tribulations of ordinary life, found in herself the strength to answer with awesome composure: ' I have nothing to reply, dying a little earlier or a little later is a matter of indifference to me. I am prepared to make the sacrifice of my life.' So she was directed to the exit for the Abbaye prison- actually a code for execution. Once outside, in the courtyard of La Force, according to the testimony of a Madame Bault who worked there, 'several blows of a hammer on the head laid her low and then they fell on her.'
Afterwords terrible stories were told of the fate of the Princesse de Lamballe; that she had been violated, alive or dead, that her breasts and private parts had been hacked off or, in another variant of savagery, her heart had been cooked and eaten. These stories were heard by many people in Paris at the time, the frequent use of the words 'fearful indignities... of a nature not to be related' and 'private infamies' as well as 'disembowelment' covering many possibilities.
Unquestionably the Princesse's head was cut off and mounted on a pike. Her naked body was also ripped open and her innards taken out, to be mounted on another pike. The corpse and the two grisly trophies were then paraded through Paris. The young Comte de Beaujolais, son of the Duc d'Orleans, who was doing his lessons at the Palais-Royal, was horrifed to see the head of 'Tante' pass by, accompanied by her lacerated body. Along the way the head was thrust into the lap of the apprentice wax modeller Marie Grosholz [the original Madame Tussaud]. She was obliged to make a cast with the 'savage murderers' standing over her although, having been art teacher to Madame Elizabeth, Marie had known the Princesse and her hands trembled almost too much for her to work.
It was now the firm intention of the crowd, fired up with wine and more wine to take the head of the Princesse de Lamballe to the Temple so that the 'Infamous Antoinette' could bestow a last kiss on those sweet lips she had loved. This makes another story plausible; that a visit was paid to a barber along the way for the Princesse's hair to be dressed. For the Princesse's original coiffure could hardly have survived the assault of the hammers outside La Force, even if she had managed to preserve it during her fortnight inside. By the time the head on its pike appeared bobbing up and down outside the dining room of the Tower, the famous blonde curls were floating prettily as they had done in life, even if the face was waxen white. As a result the head was instantly recognizable."
-Antonia Fraser
Marie Antoinette: The Journey
New York, 2001.
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oggbashan
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The way the French Monarchy and Aristocrats treated their peasants in the 18th Century was significantly different and much worse than in almost every other European country. In England the common people fared much better in the 14th Century than in France in the 18th. The English had beheaded a King a century earlier and eventually replaced him with a constitutional monarchy that had signed a compact with the people.
Part of Marie Antoinette's difficulties arose because she wasn't French. She had no real idea of the lives of the French peasantry and possibly thought their lives were like Austrian peasants who lived much better - but never as well as the English.
As for the Scots? They would never have allowed their rulers to behave as the French Kings had done.
Og
