Uh-oh! That greedy fat cat rich boy JD Vance, Republican Senator from Ohio, is asking for speaker’s fees. Speakers’ fees. Can you imagine? What in tarnation does that boy think he’s doing? More on the speaker’s fees below.
Vance is not, of course, a fat cat, although he’s certainly wealthier today than he was growing up. Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy, published in 2016, tells Vance’s story of growing up in dirt-poor Appalachia among a family of drug addicts and abusers. It’s a story of one form of the American dream: small-town hick boy goes to university and makes good. After serving in the Marines, Vance went to college and finished with a law degree from Yale.
Of course, the Democrats don’t like to see people pull themselves up by their bootstraps because their narrative depends on their constituents believing that it’s not possible. Numerous lefties bashed Vance in recent months, laughably, calling him an elitist because he managed to go to Yale.
To the extent that the party even nods to working class people any longer, it concentrates on positioning itself as the big government savior for black people. The Dems encourage blacks and other minorities to see themselves as victims who can’t get ahead and must rely on the government to give them special (and sometimes illegal) handouts. The press goes right along with, as seen in this Associated Press headline about a wacky unconstitutional Harris proposal: “Harris announces a new plan to empower Black men.”
Back to those speaker’s fees. Politico believes it has uncovered a major scandal after it “discovered” that Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy publisher drove a hard bargain when negotiating author fees for an in-person program. They wanted $40,000 for Vance, but the University of Wisconsin-Madison backed out, saying the price tag was too high for them.
Politico seems to think this is out of the ordinary in business negotiations. Without coming right out and saying it, the publication wants the reader to think “that rich snooty JD Vance is just takin’ advantage!” How else do you explain sentences like this?
“Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Vance defended Vance’s speaking fees.”
“Defended?” What law or rule was broken by insisting on a fee commensurate with a best-selling author’s drawing power?
X/Twitter user John Hasson also found Politico’s concern amusing, which means other people online did too. After all, take a look at what Politico’s “Bureau Chief and Senior Political Columnist” is charging.
Isn’t that interesting? One of Politico’s own charges up to $35,000 to speak himself.
Bizarrely, this didn’t manage to cause an internal scandal.
Social media users are not sympathetic to Politico’s view.
So does Barack Obama. Guess how much?
And then there are the Clintons, but that’s somehow different.
User “some infidel” brings us all back to reality.
