Aristocrat: Obama out of touch with working class

This is not a political blog, but it is one that with a taste for absurdity (see: the great "lipstick on a pig" debate of '08), so bear with me. Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a top fundraiser for Hillary Clinton as well as the the third wife of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild (of the legendarily wealthy European banking family), has decided to endorse John McCain. She's concerned that Barack Obama is -- you guessed it -- an elitist.

Ms. de Rothschild, according to Portfolio magazine, is the "flashiest hostest in London," chumming it up with Tony and Cherie Blair, "among other topflight Britons," and she divides her time between New York and England. She is, writes Portfolio's Lloyd Grove, "mistress of the former John Singer Sargent home in Chelsea [England] and of Ascott House, the 3,200-acre Rothschild family estate in Buckinghamshire, and the chief executive of E.L. Rothschild, the holding company that she owns with her third husband to manage investments in the Economist and various enterprises in India." Lord Rothschild recently divested himself of his share of the Rothschild banking enterprise, freeing up $600 million for the couple to use in more entrepreneurial business ventures.

When Rothschild and her husband married in 2000, they honeymooned at the Clinton White House. Originally from New Jersey, Ms. Rothschild stops Grove, laughingly, when he calls her "Lady Rothschild"; clearly, unlike Obama, she has not forgot her roots. No doubt she could bend an elbow with swing voters in West Virginia.

The former Clintonite foreshadowed her abandonment of the Democratic Party in a July interview with CNN: "Frankly I don't like him," she said of Obama. "I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him."

As a wise African-American scholar of a certain age remarks in a recent video from the Onion, we have truly seen amazing racial progress in America. Fifty years ago, we had blacks-only water fountains. Now Americans of great wealth -- and now even quasi-English aristocrats -- can condemn a black product of the middle class as a snob. Somewhere, Dr. King is smiling.

Via Kausfiles.