September 25, 2018--Second Lady

To distract myself from Trump-related agita I flipped around the Internet to see if there were some things we should book to do after returning to New York City in late October. 

Maybe take in a few shows and a couple of concerts.

I checked out Live Nation's website to see what they might be featuring. Among others they represent U2, Miley Cyrus (who I confess to liking), and Beyonce.

Maybe, I thought, we should go to something at the Barclays Center in the new Downtown Brooklyn. We haven't been there for anything, including to see the hapless Brooklyn Nets, partly owned by Jay-Z. It's that hip. 

Something unexpected jumped out as Live Nation's featured attraction--

On December 1st at the Barclays Center Michelle Obama will appear to promote her new book, Becoming Michelle Obama.

Tickets are available but going like hotcakes and so a second night is being added to the schedule. 

All over the country where she will appear in more than a dozen huge stadiums, including the 23,500 United Center in Chicago--home of the Bulls--tickets are selling so fast and the price is so high that the title of the former First Lady's book could be Becoming Rich.

First, there is the astounding $65 million advance the two Obama's received for a book from each of them. And then at the Barclays Center a fifth-row seat will set you back $1,256 (not a typo). A "meet-and-greet" package goes for $3,000, wheelchair seating at the back of the house costs $400 and a perch in the very top tier is only $29.50. For these, remember to bring binoculars.

I should add, as you attempt to assimilate this, about how the former president and his wife who represented themselves as all about reducing inequality while serving in the White House, how these two could so quickly sell their souls to Mammon (and Netflix, where they have a production deal that will yield well over $100 million) , supposedly 10 percent of the tickets to each event (I almost typed "concert") will be set aside for local "charities." Nosebleed seats, I assume.

Quoted in the New York Times, Steven Barclay (not related to the Brooklyn center), a book agent, was "virtually speechless as he checked the Ticketmaster landing page for Mrs. Obama, 'Huh,' he said, 'Wow. O.K. It's like you're looking at a Madonna tour.'"

More, I say, like a Beyonce tour. I've suspected for years that Michelle has felt Barack has an eye for Beyonce. And that she kept him an a short leash whenever there was an event at the White House or Inauguration to which Beyonce was invited. And that slowly, over time, the First Lady morphed her makeup and hair to look more and more like the singer's.

Check out the photo below and tell me I'm wrong.

April 10, 2103--The Z's In Habana

To celebrate their 5th anniversary, Jay-Z and Beyoncé spent a few days in Cuba. No big deal, right? Wrong. In fact it was.

To at least Republicans in Congress who are demanding an investigation, especially Cuban-American congressmen and also Senator Mitch McConnell, who, in his tough reelection campaign, is trying to pass himself off as a Hispanic; and who, incidentally, also announced this week that he will join the filibuster to make sure gun safety legislation never comes up for a vote.

To tell you the truth, I'm getting a little tired of Jay-Z and Mrs. Z. From Beyoncé lip-sinking the National Anthem at President Obama's inauguration (and behaving as if it were their inauguration or coronation) to Jay-Z becoming a sports agent; from her self-indulgent HBO autobiographical sort-of-documentary, to his designing the Brooklyn Nets' uniforms.

Enough of that, but to get crazy about their spending a long weekend in Habana is going too far.

It's time to get over the Cold War with Cuba. Fidel is a defanged physical wreck and his brother is a bland, no-threat commandante who, if we slipped him a few million, would let the United Fruit Company reoccupy the island or, minimally, send us a few cases of Montecristo cigars.

But cynical politicians can't help themselves from seizing on anything that enables them to pander to any sliver of a constituency. Senator (Who-Never-Will-Be-President) Marco Rubio (who got caught lying a few years ago about his own Cuban heritage), insinuated--

According to recent news reports, Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s Cuba trip, which the regime seized on for propaganda purposes, was fully licensed by the Treasury Department. If true [and he's sure it is], the Obama administration should explain exactly how trips like these comply with U.S. law and regulations governing travel to Cuba and it should disclose how many more of these trips they have licensed.

Ironically, Rubio is pitching his parents' generation of Cuban exiles who still dominate the street scene in Miami's Little Havana, but are rapidly dying out. The born-in-America generation is for the most part calling for normalization. Just like immigrant groups who preceded them, they think of themselves as Americans first and of Cuban heritage second. To them all the exhortations and prohibitions against Cuba make little sense. In November they voted for Obama by over 70 percent, through older Cubans remain traditionally Republican.

Thus, even from a political perspective, it makes sense for Obama to do what needs to be done to get on with it--to recognize Cuba and again exchange ambassadors. He should also make it easy for Jay-Z and the rest of us to travel to Cuba and even spend American dollars while there. We can do so with Russia, which 51 years ago threatened to wipe us from the face of the earth with the nuclear missiles they had installed in Cuba. The Russians, who did the installing, not Fidel.

If I were Obama, I'd wait until halfway through my second term so as not to enflame things even more than they are with the demagogic-right in Congress.

And while I'll advising Barack Obama what to do, I'd clean up our other mess in Cuba--the Guantanamo Base prison where we are still holding 166 so-called "detainees."

Those who should be tried should be shipped to appropriate courts in the United States; those who are not longer a threat should be sent back to wherever their homes are; and the handful who for whatever reasons can't be released or tried in public (maybe a total of a half dozen) should be kept in a high security prison like the Supermax in Florence, Colorado, which is eager to have them.

It is again a mix of fear and demagoguery that has thwarted Obama from carrying out his campaign promise to close Gitmo. But as I write this, right now in New York City, Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, is being tried in public. He was Al Qaeda's official spokesman and thus deemed to have engaged in terrorist activities. No one is saying he is too dangerous to be in New York, walking distance from the site of the World Trade Center. In fact, there have been dozens of equivalent trials in New York and elsewhere in the U.S., and in every instance the defendants have been convicted.

So again, in the last years of his presidency, President Obama should clean this up. That would be some change we could believe in.