Michelle Flaunts $42,150 Worth of Diamond Bracelets At NYC Fundraiser
First the trip to Spain, the lunching with the royals, then the summer vacations on the Vineyard and now…$42,150 worth of diamonds around just one of Michelle’s wrists A year’s salary for someone who’s employed. Yes, but who cares? Not the President or his First “Lady.” Come and get me, Attack Watch, but this is ostentation not merely squared, but to the nth degree.
Have they no shame?
Or taste?
Why not a tiara? Why not a crown? Why not two, one for each? Why not four, one for each of their daughters? Reason not the need.
I’m not suggesting the First Family go around in sackcloth and ashes, or rend their garments.
But anyone can see that Michelle Obama is making every former First Lady who ever drew fire for her extravagance look like Little Orphan Annie by comparison.
Is there no one in Obamaland with the the chutzpah or the judgment to say, “Not such a great move in a recession with higher than 9.1% employment Mr. President”? Evidently not.
According to today’s London’s Daily Mail:
Michelle Obama dazzled in true First Lady style at the DNC fundraiser this week, her left wrist dripping with diamonds as she supported her husband at the party event.
In total, she sported an astonishing $42,150 worth of bracelets to the New York Democratic Party dinner.
Designed by Texas-based jeweller, Katie Decker, the three white gold cuffs glittered and sparkled, catching the spotlight as she spoke to the high-powered audience.
The First Lady, 47, chose to wear Miss Decker’s Lotus cuff, with 2.9 carats of diamonds, costing $15,000, the Gothic cuff with 2.17 carats of diamonds, costing $15,350, and the $11,800 Quatrefoil bracelet with 1.73 carats of diamonds to the Gotham Hall event.
And so they waltz their careless, blinkered way down the same garden path once trod by Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette — all the way to the guillotine. In ascending order, have they no PR savvy? Do they know no history? Most important of all, have they no decency?
Richard M. Nixon had a point in 1952 when he talked about a “respectable Republican cloth coat.”
And the dream will never die. Until Election Day, 2012.
Who paid for them?
And how much did they pay for them, really?
People in power get lots of big discounts on just about everything.
These items are almost always lent by the designer to the celebrity who wears the item. It’s enormous publicity for the designer and for the affiliated retailers.
I guess the point might be similar to Marie Antoinette’s so-called “let them eat cake.” Here you have a President talking about the rich paying their fair share, but his wife is wearing $42,000 worth of jewelry. I wonder whose fair share she was wearing.
Didn’t Barry just give a fiery (by his standards) speech a couple days ago about how he’s fighting for the middle class? Yeah.
Belladonna, every question you ask in this post is rhetorical, right?
” I wonder whose fair share she is wearing ”
Damn David, I was half finished reading the article and knew what I was going to say already….then I started reading the comments and see that you beat me to it! Perfect comment!
Hi Suthenboy. Yes, every question in this post is rhetorical except this one:
“Yes, but who cares?”
I, obviously, do care.
Moreover, I don’t find the comments suggesting that the Obamas may not have paid (a) full price or (b) at all, to be relevant.
One can dress for an evening event in a dignified and attractive way without imitating the ostentatious people from whom one is seeking mega-contributions.
There’s a word for this kind of self-presentation and the word, in this context, is tacky. The same bracelet on the wrist of a potential donor would be a different story.
But this is a President presiding over an historic economic tragedy for tens of millions of Americans. For him and his wife to be asking for money and trying to “keep up with the Joneses” with whom they think they’re hobnobbing, while being completely oblivious to how Michelle’s costly flamboyant, gaudy, flashy, pretentious, and grandiose accessories look to citizens of a country in dire economic straits is politically unwise and shows no regard for the reality in the country.
This is the moment for modesty, not ostentation — regardless of who paid for the bracelets.
Holy cow is that an awkward kiss or what? Weird.
Leigh, you know I thought the same thing. They look as though they’d never met, much less ever kissed. I was trying to keep the focus on the ostentation so I wrote nothing re the weird awkwardness of the “kiss.”
Glad you commented on it.
Photographers always say that you can catch anyone in a transitional facial expression or pose, and that’s certainly true. But I agree with you: this looks weird.
It’s a great photograph. The kiss is awkward, and tainted by the teleprompter. She looks pampered and happy. He looks tired. Makes me wonder if this marriage is going to survive the 2012 election.
When a person has no moral compass or center and has not ever had to work hard for anything in their life and is then, again without having to really work hard, vaulted into a position of power surrounded by grinning flunkies who exist solely to satisfy one’s slightest whim, then such behavior as exhibited by Queen Michelle and King Barack is to be expected. As Obama’s chances for re-election steadily tank look for all restraints on Michelle’s lust for the trappings of wealth and power escalate to undreamed of heights for a First Lady. She is determined to get what in her mind is owed to her by the peasants.
What is really irritating about Queen Michelle is that she really truly believes the lies told to her by her courtiers and the lackey media that she is one of the most beautiful women in the world when reality is exactly the opposite. When the real world finally bursts into her fantasy world she is in for a very harsh and rude shock.
A truly despicable pair of human beings are these Obamas.
Yes, I never could get that. From the horrible black widow spider dress on election day to the laughable juxtaposition with Carla Bruni Sarkozy, the media has fawned all over her. But her sense of style is horrible, I mean just terrible, especially for someone as big as she is. I don’t think all of these fashion editors truly believe their own BS- it’s a complete and total sell-out. Pathetic.
come now, haven’t you read the Emporer’s New Clothes?
I expect they were borrowed and the owner did that for the publicity, but who knows?
For your daily dose of the antics of America’s busy mom and fashion icon, I recommend Michelle Obama’s Mirror:http://www.michellesmirror.com/
One of my must visit daily sites just like your weekly column at American Thinker is a must weekly read. Michellesmirror.com is incredibly funny and dead on target.
cool, even though I needed to add the ‘www.’ to get it to load. I’m going to bookmark this right next to POTUS’s teleprompter site.
Regardless of who the jewelry actually belongs to, or how much was paid for it, it just looks – heck, I don’t know the best word, but decadent comes to mind. Tacky or tasteless maybe. I know this was a fundraiser attended by (very likely) well-off people who don’t mind the glitz and could possibly afford such baubles (heck, there were probably folks there thinking “mine’s so much bigger”), but they had to know there would be cameras present. Do they just not care how it looks in flyover country?
Bob, I completely agree and in fact, if you look above your comment to my reply to Suthenboy, you’d think you and I were sharing a single brain–or one double brain! We’re definitely on the same page and not just on this online page.
That is just freaky! Hey, Fringe is on tonight – maybe we’re like alternate universe versions of the same person, except in the same universe. Or something like that. Where’s the evil Mr Spock?
LET THEM EAT CAKE!!!!!!!!!!
There,I said it…
This is a perfect example of the couple’s attitude about social leveling equality and income redistribution: yes, we are in favor of it for you but not necessarily for us. This attitude was on display when DSK, the French economist, lawyer, politician, and member of the French Socialist Party, checked into his Sofitel hotel suite in Manhattan, only to find his career unravel around him. Mao Zedong lived in a number of palaces situated around China and was catered to in every way by a bevy of beautiful nurses. A recent biography said he was carried up mountains while sitting in a sedan chair during the long march. I could go on.
What this country desperately needs is an honest debate about whether we want social engineering, government control of business and income redistribution, socialism, or a free enterprise system where we can all benefit, admittedly some more than others, from the opportunity to live our lives free from government intrusion. It is one thing for the market to decide which businesses prosper and which do not. It is quite another for the government to pick winners and losers, constantly injecting politics and favoritism into the process.
A market-directed economy is democratic because power is widely distributed. A socialist system on the the other hand, concentrates political power; and the people in charge live far better lives than the rest of us tax slaves.
This is what our president wants for us but obviously not for himself and his wife. But we will not have an honest debate about which system the country wants for two reasons: one, the president and his ilk would lose and he knows it. Two, the president presents himself as a moderate, and to some extent he has gotten away with it. But he knows where he wants to the country to go and he is quite busy pursuing his agenda. The FCC, DOE and NLRB are busy putting his agenda into place even though the Congress has rejected it, as we would if asked, if most of us were even aware of what he is doing.
We all agree that Queen Michelle should be trotted off to the guillotine. With her husband in the same cart.
And that they are both sans taste or common sense, or the common touch.
Suppose the cuffs had been constructed of chrome or stainless steel and teeny glass beads? Where would all the fire have gone? Would she still be the idiot she makes such an effort at being? Yes, she would. The problem is not that she wears joolery that’s too expensive. The problem is who she is. We of different political suasion, know that she can do nothing right. Not even kiss or hug. And neither can her husband. She could have worn rubber bands around her wrists (as I do) and she still would have come off an asshole.
I do not think these two people know each other, either. That kind of picture can lose Obama an election–which is what I like most about those Wonder Woman wrist cuffs–just remember back to Gore raping his wife on stage to show he was a MAN. Give us all break, First Couple. Don’t re-up in 2012. And keep up those vacations to Spain and Martha’s Vineyard and Hawaii, and for goodness sake, stick with the expensive diamonds, and those gorgeous (colorful) dresses you sport. Please don’t change a thing, OK? [Precious in the movie of that name had more class.]
Hey Mofo, don’ be rapping bad on the woman’s bling!!! That’s raaaaaaaaacist!!!
Reminds me of Mr. T of the A Team fame and the, what looked like, ton of gold he wore around his neck. He or the local pusher down in the hood. When is her appointment to have the gold caps put on her teeth?
Nancy Reagan, on the other hand, was vilified by the media and Dems (shouldn’t that be one word now?) for her attire and love of pomp and circumstance.
Like her husband and his Obots, MO gets a free pass.
Finally, either they are completely clueless about how this plays in flyover land or they don’t give a flying bleep. I suspect it’s the latter.
Everything Belladonna writes is true, the trashy, tasteless display of tackiness, the trailer park insensitivity to the hardships of unemployed Americans and the unbelievable awkwardness of this odd, strange First Couple.
However, the great irony here is Katie Decker is a 23 year old recent graduate of Texas A&M, the most conservative university in the reddest state in the nation, Texas.
My hometown is a short drive from there and I take a certain joy from this episode.
The very fact the Obamas have given young Katie the biggest break in her life, a girl who started designing jewelry in her Aggie dorm room, is just too delicious to pass up without notice.
Oh, and yes, the cuffs were loaned to the White House by the Manhattan vendor who markets the Decker line for Katie.
Whats going on?! Does the 1st lady understand that she embarrasses the American people by acting like a rich bitch!
On loan!!!! They are not hers.
Why does the name Imelda keep coming to mind…something about excessive and shoes….
Hey, Look!!! The teleprompter really captures the whole theme of this Presidential Romance. It is like, hey, we are the most open and transparent couple who have ever lived in the White House…you can see right through us…no, I mean, you can see us right through the teleprompter!
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