Thread: Barack Obama criticised for cost of Broadway date

Barack Obama criticised for cost of Broadway date

President Barack Obama made good on a campaign promise to his wife Michelle by taking her on a Saturday night date in New York, only to attract criticism for wasting tax payers' money in a recession.

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Last Updated: 11:12PM BST 31 May 2009


Barack Obama and Michelle board a small jet after a personal visit to New York, at JFK Airport in New York. Photo: Reuters

Rather than taking the normal presidential Boeing 747 from Washington and back, the couple opted to fly in a Gulfstream jet, requiring two other small planes to follow, carrying staff and the media retinue.

From JFK airport the Obamas and their entourage were flown by helicopters from the Marine One fleet to a helipad in Manhattan, before they were whisked to dinner at Blue Hill, a West Village restaurant with its own farm in upstate New York, which is at the forefront of a trend for eating locally grown produce. The President and First Lady, sharply dressed for a night on the town, then headed to the Belasco Theatre for Joe Turner's Come and Gone, a play about black America in the early 1900s, with residents of a boarding house recalling their migration from the sharecropping farms of the South to the industrialised North.

Though New Yorkers seemed thrilled at the visit, with crowds eight deep in places as the White House couple were driven from dinner to the theatre, Mr Obama's opponents accused him of insensitivity.

"As President Obama prepares to wing into Manhattan's theatre district on Air Force One to take in a Broadway show, GM [General Motors] is preparing to file bankruptcy and families across America continue to struggle to pay their bills," said a statement from the Republican National Committee.

The RNC's Gail Gitcho said: "If President Obama wants to go to the theatre, isn't the Presidential box at the Kennedy Centre [in Washington] good enough?"

The New York Post estimated the cost of the trip as $24,000 (£14,000) per aircraft, but said the Obamas paid for dinner and their tickets themselves.

A White House spokesman said that taking three smaller planes was more fuel efficient.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -date.html

He should be criticized for this boneheaded move. They could've had a NYC date night the next time they'd be in NY for an official function. A Broadway show is not an official function, especially in this economy with OUR money!

I am begining to believe that Wonder Boy lives on a plane, not in Washington. 'Look at me Ma, no hands!'

here we go again.
just another blundering move from the supposed "chosen one"

what a maroon, as bugs would say