We’re not quite sure which part of this story is the funniest. Take your choice:
(a) The fact that there’s a celebrity studded egghead event called “The Aspen Ideas Festival”, or (B) The fact that Barbra Streisand was there, or (C) The fact that she used the occasion to celebrate capitalism and reject Barack Obama.
The Daily Beast has the details:
You’d think the well-heeled and enlightened eggheads at the Aspen Ideas Festival—which is running all week in this fashionable resort town with heady panel discussions and earnest disquisitions involving all manner of deep thinkers and do-gooders—would be receptive to an intellectually ambitious president with big ideas of his own.
In a way, the folks attending this cerebral conclave pairing the Aspen Institute think tank with the Atlantic Monthly magazine might even be seen as President Obama’s natural base.
Apparently not so much.
The story continues:
(Harvard business and history professor Niall) Ferguson called for what he called “radical” measures. “I can’t emphasize strongly enough the need for radical fiscal reform to restore the incentives for work and remove the incentives for idleness.” He praised “really radical reform of the sort that, for example, Paul Ryan [the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee] has outlined in his wonderful ‘Roadmap’ for radical, root-and-branch reform not only of the tax system but of the entitlement system” and “unleash entrepreneurial innovation.” Otherwise, Ferguson warned: “Do you want to be a kind of implicit part of the European Union? I’d advise you against it.”
This was greeted by hearty applause from a crowd that included Barbra Streisand and her husband James Brolin. “Depressing, but fantastic,” Streisand told me afterward, rendering her verdict on the session. “So exciting. Wonderful!”
Brolin’s assessment: “Mind-blowing.”
Yes, Barbra, abandoning everything you’ve promoted for the last twenty years and rejecting Obamanomics is “exciting” and “wonderful” and “mind-blowing.” And since you don’t seem to realize that’s what you’re doing, might we add, pretty damn hilarious.
Source: The Daily Beast
