“ONE FOR THE BOOKS,” Mike Allen writes in this morning’s “Playbook” while calling our attention to a New York Post article about Barack Obama’s Tuesday night fundraiser:
"Obama slams billionaires at the home of a guy named Rich Richman," by N.Y. Post's Richard Johnson: “Obama blasted Republicans as the party of 'billionaires' on Tuesday while mingling with high-rollers at the $26 million estate of Rich Richman ... in Greenwich, Conn. Richman, who built his $10 billion company developing rental housing, lives in the Conyers Farm area, where the minimum lot size is 10 acres. Twenty-five donors paid $32,400 each to get their photo taken with the president. Others paid $10,000 for dinner.”
Fair enough. But then, two items later, Allen writes this:
OUT AND ABOUT -- Journalists and others turned out last night at UAE Ambassador Yousef Oteiba's compound in McLean to celebrate the release of "The Invisible Front: Love and Loss in an Era of Endless War" by Yochi Dreazen, managing editor for news at Foreign Policy. Catered by Café Milano, guests gobbled up crab cakes, seared tuna on wontons, beef carpaccio, bruschetta, and chocolates and truffles. From the book: "There is no single cause for the spike in military suicide, and there is no single solution to the problem. But that doesn't mean we should give up. The nation sent more than 2.5 million of its sons and daughters to fight in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other distant lands, and many have returned with invisible wounds that will haunt them for the rest of their lives."
Sure, bashing billionaires at a Greenwich mansion is absurd. But flacking for a Georgetown restaurant’s finger food on the back of a book about military suicide is offensive.
YA CAN’T MAKE IT UP: Allen had already plugged Café Milano earlier in this same “Playbook”!
SPOTTED: Former U.S. solicitor general Ted Olson at Café Milano
I really hope the restaurant comps Allen some truffles for his troubles.