At first blush, I didn't find the notion of $1,000 per-person receptions for the election of a person to an office while simultaneously preaching economic fairness sexy at all. Not when unemployment still remains high. Not when people who work an awful lot of hours for $1,000 just to turn around and pay it out for the luxury of having a roof over their heads, food on the table and running water. Not when too many Americans are still worrying if the next $1,000 will come fast enough to keep that balance of fragile and necessary plates spinning in their lives or if this is the month when it all comes crashing down. Not when people are picking up the pieces.
Perhaps, though, fairness was precisely the sermon to deliver to the $1,000 per-person crowd. It would have been sexy if Obama would have stood up at that fundraising reception and announced that all of the money raised there was going to go to the Bellevue chapter of the Salvation Army. Or the Bellevue Boys and Girls Club.
It would have been sexy if, in all of the places and all of the ways Obama raised a reported $11.8 million for his election in January, he gave the proceeds (or at least a portion of them) to local charities to help those who won't be able to afford to travel via the best airports and the best railroads in the world.
It would be sexy to see, for once, a leader of our country put his money where his mouth is so when he speaks of opportunity, he is talking about opportunity to help people instead of programs. So that when he speaks of America having the best, it has far less to do with fancy airports and far more to do with people not going to bed worrying about what happens to their families if they get sick and can't work. So that when he speaks of hope, it's not the next sound bite to turn on the next set of voters but, rather, it's something that is. That will be, that can be. And that it starts with him, just as it starts with each one of us.
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