In the grand scheme of things, the Paul Ryan wine fiasco means nothing. For those unfamiliar with the story, Ryan and a few economists were dining in an upscale restaurant. His guests ordered a $350 bottle of wine. And then they ordered another. Susan Feinberg of Rutgers University, also an economist, was celebrating her birthday. She became so (weirdly) incensed at the choice of beverages that she had to give Ryan “a piece of her mind.”
She approached the table and asked Ryan “how he could live with himself” sipping expensive wine while advocating for cuts to programs for seniors and the poor. Some verbal jousting between Feinberg and the other two men ensued. One of the two men said he had ordered the wine, was drinking it and paying for it. In hearing how much the wine cost, Ryan said only: “Is that how much it was?”
The clash became especially heated when Feinberg asked the men if they were lobbyists.
“F— her,” one of them replied and stood up in a menacing way, according to Feinberg’s account. Feinberg said her husband then “puffed out his chest” in response before the manager and a waiter came over and Feinberg decided she had said her piece and it was time to leave.
It’s bad enough living in D.C. with people asking you for change when you get off at every Metro. Now a Congressman can’t even go out to eat with a few economists without a liberal professor going Code Pink Crazy on him? Paul Ryan should have been the one confronting Rutgers’ Susan Feinberg, asking how she could clog her pie hole with Steak Tartare Atilla and Duck Confit Façon Tarbais while liberals are out there trying to convince the American people Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid don’t need the kind of fundamental changes he’s advocating for. How can Susan Feinberg “live with herself” when Keynesian economics has a track record of abysmal failure? Liberalism’s deepest footprints leave nothing but crime and misery and hopelessness where Feinbergian good intentions once once stood.
Paul Ryan’s friends happen to like a good glass of wine with their meal. In Susan Feinberg’s mind, perhaps it would have been better if the Congressman was home taking pictures of his crotch and posting them on Twitter Weiner-style since it’s free! (although, how do you calculate the cost of moral decay by Anthony Weiner advocates like Janeane Garofalo?)
Next time I see Susan Feinberg in a restaurant perhaps I’ll confront her over unconstitutional health care mandates. Maybe her husband will “puff out” his chest and I’ll recoil in fear (because who knows how much testosterone surges through the veins of liberals dining at Bistro Bis. It has to be off the charts).
In short: Susan Feinberg’s self-righteous pomp is a joke. When’s the last time she confronted a Congressional tax cheat? Never. Put in elitist DC Beltway terms an ivory tower foodie can understand: The smell of Selles-sur-Chere gone wrong wafts downward from the moral pedestal she stands on. It’s time to step off and back away.
Now excuse me while I turn my attention to a serious politician.
Update: Allahpundit over at hotair covers Susan Feinberg’s sudden silence. I wonder why…
Douglas Ernst Blog 