lifestyles of the rich and self-indulgent

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Bis dat, qui cito dat (He gives twice who gives quickly or opportunely...)

DeNeen L. Brown of the Washington Post recently reported on the Alfalfa Club, an exclusive circle of the rich and the powerful founded in 1913 for no real purpose except to organize a banquet each year to honor the birthday of Gen. Robert E. Lee. (The club takes its name from the legume whose roots probe deeply for liquid. An Alfalfan, it is said, will do anything for a drink.) After reading this, I needed a drink myself.

"On the guest list of this year's dinner: Chief Justice John Roberts, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida. Vice President Cheney, who seems to emerge from wherever he goes when there is something really important to be said. The powerful and the rich sit next to each other at a head table spanning the length of the ballroom. President Bush was to sit next to Roberts, who was seated next to the ambassador of Germany, who sat next to Rice, who sat next to O'Connor. In between was the secretary of the Treasury and the ambassador of Japan. Then came Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. According to a seating chart, to the president's left were places for George H.W. Bush, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Mayor Anthony Williams. And down the line was Laura Bush, who was to sit next to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and OMB Director Joshua Bolten and Alan Greenspan, who was to sit next to Barbara Bush. And somewhere in the room was Karl Rove.

For four hours, they dined on $230-a-plate meals of coriander-poached lobster with artichoke and fried dill lotus root. They ate filet mignon and pistachio-encrusted sea bass with roasted beets and baby carrots and black currant sauce. And they were served a salad with dates and raspberries and brie with table water crackers. The salad course gave them the break they needed to get up and shake hands. The night was filled with speeches. And President Bush would split sides with unexpected laughter."

While New Orleans is in a-shambles and millions of other Americans suffer the ignobility of poverty, their leaders revel in their glut and debauchery, having laughs at the expense of the nation. It's reminscent of the final scene in George Orwell's Animal Farm, when "the creatures outside looked from pig to man, from man to pig and from pig to man again, but already it was impossible to say which was which." According to an excerpt of the remarks of Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell: "I want to acknowledge my wife, our nation's secretary of labor, Elaine Chao . . . And she is the motivation for what will be my platform as president of the Alfalfa Club. It is time we take our culture of cronyism and replace it with a different culture. A new culture, a better culture. It's time we replace a culture of cronyism with a culture of nepotism. Alfalfans one. Alfalfans all: Ask not what this club can do for you. Ask what this club can do for your family."

Indeed.

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