Barack Obama wants the American people to stop caring so much about personal wealth and celebrity status. Speaking at a private stakeholder reception for the $850 million Obama Presidential Center, which opens to the public on Friday, the former president complained that "salt-of-the-earth, bedrock people" were being screwed over by nefarious elites consumed by greed and vanity.
"We've got a set of institutions that have fallen victim to the siren song of 'everything is about money, everything is about attention, everything is about fame, everything is about getting over,'" Obama said. "But meanwhile, there are just a lot of people out here doing the right thing and raising their families and taking care of people."
Is he joking? Because it would be hard to find anyone more ill-suited to lecturing Americans on these topics.
In a 2010 speech touting financial reform, the former president said there was a "certain point" at which someone has made "enough money." Perhaps he will let us know when he gets there.
Since leaving office, Obama and his wife Michelle have amassed an estimated net worth approaching $100 million. That includes an extensive real estate portfolio: mansions in Chicago and Washington, D.C., a waterfront estate on Martha's Vineyard, and a three-acre compound in Hawaii.
The Obamas have accumulated an even greater collection of celebrity chums. On Friday, the Obamas will host an invite-only opening ceremony for the Obama Center that will feature performances by Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Bono and The Edge from U2, Christina Aguilera, John Legend, Marc Anthony, The Roots, Jennifer Hudson, Eddie Vedder, and more.
Obama's friend Steven Spielberg will also make an appearance just days after the Hollywood director inducted Taylor Swift into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Valerie Jarrett, the longtime Obama aide who makes $740,000 as CEO of the Obama Foundation, said the star-studded ceremony would "inspire people everywhere to believe in their power to bring change home."
In August 2021, Obama inspired the American people to remain hopeful during the COVID-19 pandemic by throwing himself a massive 60th birthday party at his Martha's Vineyard estate. Spielberg and Springsteen were there, obviously, along with Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Al Sharpton, Don Cheadle, Tom Hanks, and Dwyane Wade.
Despite the "scaled back" guest list—a number of celebs were reportedly disinvited for health and safety reasons—Obama's party was a "super spreader" event that wreaked havoc on the glamorous island's only hospital.
It is unclear whom the Obamas were seeking to inspire in 2017, when they vacationed on billionaire Richard Branson's private island in the Caribbean before joining Hanks, Springsteen, and Oprah Winfrey on billionaire David Geffen's superyacht in French Polynesia.
In March 2014, when Obama was still president, he went to Italy and asked the U.S. ambassador to round up some "interesting Italians" for a Tuscan feast. Obama held court at the ambassador's residence with a particle physicist, two heirs to the Fiat auto fortune, and a postmodern architect. The following morning, Obama reportedly complained that being president of the United States forced him to focus on "minuscule things" such as politics when he'd much rather be discussing "big interesting things" such as "life and art" with other wealthy elites.
The Obamas have not escaped criticism for their post-White House escapades, they just don't seem to care. Last year, for example, Michelle Obama published a $50 coffee table book about fashion. They plowed ahead with the Obama Center despite legal challenges from environmentalists and local activists who complained that poor black residents—one might call them "salt-of-the-earth, bedrock people"—would be displaced by the inevitable gentrification.
Obama reportedly admonished the architects designing the center for not being "bold enough," and pushed them to "go bigger" by incorporating the works of Constantin Brâncuși, a modernist sculptor known for phallic imagery. That inspired them to produce the "hulking gray tower," aka the Obamalisk, which many have described as a hideous eyesore resembling an alien spacecraft or a tinpot dictator's brutalist mausoleum.
In other words, it's a fitting monument for a man of Obama's colossal ego—the ambitious activist who published his first memoir at age 33 and ran for president just two years after being sworn in as a U.S. senator. During the 2008 campaign, according to the New York Times, Obama had a habit of "warning new hires that he would be able to do their jobs better than they could."
Now he's a semi-retired Netflix producer who bombards directors with notes to improve their scripts. He's earned the right to invite his celebrity friends to a party for the massive shrine he built for himself in a poor neighborhood. What really matters is whether Obama can use his platform to highlight the fact that hardworking Americans are still struggling due to this country's obsession with money and fame.
The answer is yes. Yes, he can.
