A Column, Written on a Sunday, Whilst Barefoot.

by Eileen McGuire-Mahony | 11:35 am, May 3, 2009 | Comments Off

One of the perks of being the Washington Bureau Chief is that I have an army of research minions who send me carefully selected links.  It’s like they do all they work while I wear outrageous hats and drink with random Beltway dwellers and then I just add commentary.  Actually, it’s exactly like that.  And I love them for it.

Almost as much as I now love Stephon Marbury, who plays basketball for gazillions of dollars, moonlights as a savvy Capitalist, and who understands how to  be an inspiration to kids striving to make it out of harsh, impoverished inner city lives.

When Stephon made it and looked back on his own youth in the grinding poverty of New York City’s housing projects, he remembered what it felt like to long for the ultimate proof of belonging and of being hip – Air Jordans at an astronomical $200.

He never got them and he still doesn’t have them.  Instead he has his own line, Starbury, which tops out at $22.98.

So now, aspiring hoop stars can share footwear with their hero without leaving the family pantry bare (or is it, barefoot?).  And maybe celebrity gawkers can ‘get’ that you don’t need to spend a fortune to buy a fabricated image with someone’s name on it.

Whether that name is Michael Jordan or Michelle Obama (you knew it was coming.  This is a political blog.).

$540 for a pair of tennis shoes?  For a pair of bubblegum pink metallic French shoes?  With gray shoelaces?  In a recession?  From a woman who serenely tells the rest of us to ‘sacrifice’ and get by with less for the sake of common good?  Are we’re OK with this.

Are we, as a sartorial and civic minded people, collectively mainlining tile grout?

This is not the first time FLOTUS set a foot wrong, either.  She dug up the wet muck of the South Lawn for her garden wearing $600+ couture suede boots.

PPC finds it utterly absurd to hear this woman praised as a model of how average women can look fabulous and how fashion can be afforable.  PPC also finds it ridiculous that a woman who can’t match shades and wears sweaters that look like someone had a seizure while holding a Bedazzling gun is held up as a style icon at all.  But those sweaters only look cheap.  They’re $600 cashmere, bitches.  Each.

As I’ve said before, if Shelly feels the need to buy the image she covets (and she does) because she’s not working with much palatable substance of her own (and she’s not) then she should feel free to bankrupt herself and her husband with platinum lined anoraks and the finest leopard print patent leather kitten heels money can buy.

We’re very into free will at PPC.  We’re also into honesty.  She shouldn’t be cooing that her custom-made ballgowns and not-available-to-the-public-in-this-color-but-made-just-for-HER jackets are in any way exemplary of how ‘real women’ dress.  Nor have we missed how, buried in her feeble praise for the ‘average woman’ is a constant reminder that she is herself, decidedly above-average but that she will consent to be mimicked by her fans if you want to ape her outfits.

The idea that success requires spending several times the average woman’s monthly income on one ensemble, or that success means you use your money to become a walking billboard for the label of the moment, is destructive.

So how does Stephon fit into this?  Well, he got it right.  What’s he’s done sends the message that he made it from the lowest place to the top in ordinary shoes and that he’s still wearing ordinary shoes.  He’s got something Michelle will likely never have.  A sense of himself.

Comments

Praise for PPC From Our Lefty "Fan"

• "Zany-ass bombast-entertainment...Hackneyed weirdo communist pseudo-nostalgia" --Alan Franklin, ProgressNow

Featured Posts

• Rising Oil Production in Alberta: More Evidence Disproving Hubbert’s Peak

  In today’s environment it’s hard to find good news. But this is good news: the free market is working, and putting statists’ predictions, like Hubbert’s, to shame. Oh, the joy!

• Regulatory Agencies Continue to Slow the Economy
• Printing Money Doesn’t Work in Britain Either
• Oklahoma’s Constitutional Amendment Would Pit Taxpayers Against Unions
• Friday’s Unemployment Numbers: Correcting the Corrections
• Romney Woos Grand Junction, Earns Sen. King’s Endorsement
• The Borking of Netflix: movie service finds privacy law to be an inconvenience