News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. July 11, 2014: One of my favorite subjects – I have quite a few – is Air Force One.
It might be my favorite topic here in Obama’s America. It provides rich food again and again for thought and never better than this episode because the subject is the FOOD on Air Force One.
I will get to the food in a moment but what I like most about Air Force One as a topic is the unequaled symbolism. Nothing else about the Presidency addresses opulence and privilege better than Air Force One. It is the ultimate fantasy that defines the President as different as every other human.
No one, not even those super rich Arab cut throats who rule Saudi Arabia and other Middle Easy totalitarian kingdoms, have it as good even if they have planes that are just as big and more luxurious accommodations. None of them travel in the same bubble that President Obama does.
And imagine anytime during the day or night on a whim, wanting to go anywhere in the world, surrounded by hundreds of security agents, staff and servants and bullet proof super limousines on back up planes.
If you were President Obama – a scary thought for many – you just name the destination, pick a place any place, when you want to leave and like magic it happens flawlessly starting with the large helicopter Marine One that appears out of nowhere on The White House lawn to whisk Barack Obama to the nearest airport to board Air Force One along with his entourage.
Life can be very, very sweet if you are President of the United States.
What a life and the People’s President Barack Obama loves Air Force One.
Now we can get to the food and dining on Air Force One this episode. And once again it is our partners at The New York Times who did all the research especially since I will never be invited just like almost every one of 300 million Americans never will.
Air Force One is for the Privileged Few.
Here is an extra twist for my readers to make sure you get the message.
As counter point I am going to utilize another front page article from The Times that was published just about the same time about poverty in America.
So are you hungry let’s dig in …
The title of the June 27, 2014, article in the Times is …
“On Air Force One, No Lightening Up on Burgers and Cake”
And the article begins …
WASHINGTON — “A blue-cheese burger with lettuce, tomato and garlic aioli, accompanied by Parmesan-sprinkled fries. Chocolate fudge cake. Pasta shells stuffed with four cheeses, topped with meat sauce and shredded mozzarella, and served with a garlic breadstick. Cake infused with limoncello. Buffalo wings with celery, carrots and homemade ranch dip.”
“Such was the fare served to passengers aboard Air Force One during a particularly grueling three-state day on the campaign trail just before the 2012 election. Not much has changed since.”
Dear readers this is NOT economy class on Southwest Airlines.
Let me bring in the other article before we get lost in an orgy of food. This article also from the front page of The New York Times just two days later on June 29, 2014 titled …
“Boom Meets Bust in Texas: Atop Sea of Oil, Poverty Digs In”
This article begins …
GARDENDALE, Tex. — “From the window of her tin-roofed trailer, Judy Vargas can glimpse a miraculous world. It is as close as the dust kicked up by the trucks barreling by but seems as distant as Mars.”
This is symbolism too just like Air Force One. In this case Glendale symbolizes the many dirt poor communities in America that Air Force One regularly flies high above as everyone on board feasts with Barack.
As for Glendale …
“Now, it is the scene of one of the greatest oil booms the country has ever seen. But poverty endures in makeshift, barely governed communities called colonias, such as the one where Ms. Vargas shares her trailer with an ever-shifting assemblage of relatives.”
“It is a different kind of poverty than it was in 1928, this time surrounded by a buzz of industrial activity, not empty stretches of scrub grass. But it feels as entrenched as ever, reinforced by bad luck, bad choices, a lack of education and the isolation that allows the poor to remain invisible and adrift in lonely, distant orbits.”
“It feels the same to us,” Ms. Vargas said of life amid the oil frenzy. “The money that they have, we didn’t have it before. And we don’t have it now.”
Enough let’s go back up on Air Force One it’s a lot more fun!
“To say the least. The food on Air Force One is well known among White House staff members and reporters for being plentiful in quantity and broad in appeal, but not always the perfect mirror of the nutritional recommendations coming out of the office of the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has made healthy eating and living her mission.”
Thank God Michelle has her own big plane most of the time!
Back to Air Force One please …
“Mr. Chaudhary, who estimates that he flew on Air Force One about three times a week, said the Obamas’ taste for healthier fare had in fact shaped some of the current menus. He said the president enjoyed more nutritious food like salmon, almonds and broccoli). Mr. Obama also has a soft spot for Honest Tea, a low-calorie, caffeine-free drink — Black Forest Berry flavor, to be specific.”
Anything you want Mr. President.
Back on the ground in Glendale, Texas …
“The fracking sand — so powdery it seemed scooped from an exclusive beach — stretched for about 100 yards on roads outside homes and the Gardendale Qwik Stop, the colonia’s lone store. In 2012, federal health officials issued an alert about the health hazards workers faced from exposure to fracking-sand dust. Breathing so-called silica dust can cause silicosis, a lung disease.”
So what’s for dinner in Glendale …
“Early one evening in May, Ms. Vargas, 28, cooked spaghetti for her three children and her grandmother. Ms. Vargas, a high school dropout, had just arrived home from her job as a restaurant cook. She and her grandmother, who works as a maid at a motel, make a total of roughly $1,500 a month, far below the federal poverty level of $2,325 for a family of five. Above their dining table, there was a portrait of the Last Supper and, tucked in a corner of the frame, a picture of Ms. Vargas’s uncle, unsmiling in a white uniform and one of at least three incarcerated relatives. The family ate and swatted at flies as trucks roared by.”
This is not Air Force One let’s get back on board before Barack Obama and his traveling Circus leave us behind stranded in Glendale eating spaghetti.
So here is what I think ….
On each one of these hundreds of trips President Obama takes aboard Air Force One back and forth across America again and again he should be required while on the ground to stop and visit the poorest community within driving distance of his armor plated upper limousine.
Imagine by now he could have visited these last 5 ½ years hundreds of the poorest communities in America,
The only problem is when he climbs back on Air Force One all that endlessly tempting food they serve might not be so inviting.
I guess it’s not such a good idea.
Ruining President Obama’s dinner.
Now I’ll never get invited on Air Force One.
