REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION | THE 2008 ELECTION
Cindy McCain’s $300,000 Outfit
by Vanity Fair
September 4, 2008, 10:29 am

One of the persistent memes in the Republican line of attack against Barack Obama is the notion that he is an elitist, whereas the G.O.P. represent real working Americans like Levi “F-in’ Redneck” Johnston.
It caught our attention, then, when First Lady Laura Bush and would-be First Lady Cindy McCain took the stage Tuesday night wearing some rather fancy designer clothes. So we asked our fashion department to price out their outfits.

Laura Bush
Oscar de la Renta suit: $2,500
Stuart Weitzman heels: $325
Pearl stud earrings: $600–$1,500
Total: Between $3,425 and $4,325

Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

Wow! No wonder McCain has so many houses: his wife has the price of a Scottsdale split-level hanging from her ears.
(All prices except Laura’s shoes and Cindy’s watch are estimates, and the jewelry prices are based on the assumption that the pieces are real.)

“Who listens to us? Nobody. Biharis keep dying due to floods, but nation doesn’t take notice of them. I know so many families in north Bihar who have lost their homes 14 times due to floods after Independence. Then, so what? Does anybody care for them? Do you know last year 960 people died due to floods in North Bihar? Nobody reads news from Bihar. That is Dinesh Kumar Mishra.

Environmentalist and engineer from IIT, 62-year-old Mishra adds poignantly, “Bihar is destined to die. Nobody counts us.”

Uma has provided links to this and other stories about the flooding in Bihar. Also links for providing relief.

In 1965 Yash Pal Suri left India for the U.K. The first thing he does on his arrival in England is to buy 2 Super 8 cameras, 2 projectors and 2 reel to reel recorders. One set of equipment he sends to his family in India, the other he keeps for himself. For forty years he uses it to share his new life abroad with those back home - images of snow, miniskirted ladies dancing bare-legged, the first trip to an English supermarket - his taped thoughts and observations providing a unique chronicle of the eccentricities of his new English hosts. Back in India, his relatives in turn, respond with their own ‘cine-letters’ telling tales of weddings, festivals and village life.

As time passes and the planned return to India becomes an increasingly remote possibility, the joy and curiosity of the early exchanges give way to the darker reality of alienation, racism and a family falling apart.

A bitter-sweet time capsule of alienation, discovery, racism and belonging, “I for India” is a chronicle of immigration in sixties Britain and beyond, seen through the eyes of one Asian family and their movie camera.

Nearly a year ago, I had put up a blog-post about the documentary film “I for India.” Thanks to Filmiholic and her TiVo, I’ve now had a chance to watch the film. It’s wonderful and I recommend it highly. The idea of the exchanged newsreels had drawn me to the film, and I was especially interested in seeing the England, as well as India, of my parents’ generation. What I was not prepared for, and which blew me away, was the film-maker Sandhya Suri’s portrait of her father, and of his sense of dividedness, and of what happens when nostalgia turns sour.