Dear, dear. Columba Bush, wife of former Florida governor and current GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush, was detained by U.S. customs officials and had to pay a $4,100 fine for failing to declare part of a haul of jewelry and clothes she acquired on a $19,000 spending spree in Paris.
Not long afterwards, according to Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty, Columba Bush headed to a favorite jewelry store in a Miami suburb and treated herself to another $43,000 worth of expensive baubles. Indeed, over the years she spent some $90,000 on jewelry at that store, including a $17,000 diamond-crusted Rolex watch, two pairs of diamond earrings, a gold-and-diamond necklace, and an 18-karat gold-and-diamond bracelet by Bulgari that retailed for nearly $11,000. (Diamonds seemed to be a Florida first lady’s best friend.)
Nifty reporting job….Oh, wait! All of those trips by Columba Bush to the jewelry store took place some fifteen years ago! The customs bust was in 1999!
Although Tumulty threw into her story a couple of more up-to-date and Dem-focused references, such as John Edwards’ $400 haircut and Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s six-figure speaking fees ($300,000 is the Clinton bargain-basement rate), digging through Columba Bush’s yellowing jewelry bills looked more like oppo research than cutting-edge journalism.
When Breitbart writer John Nolte jumped on Tumulty for her “hit job” on a GOP canddidate’s wife, as he called it, Tumulty proffered via Twitter an even more bizarre example of what she seemed to regard as the WaPo’s bipartisan journalistic fairness.
“[W]ritten lots about cost of michelle clothes, which republicans have questioned,” Tumulty tweeted.
But the link to a 2012 Washington Post blog item that Tumulty included in her tweet, instead of being about Michelle Obama’s yen for designer clothing, actually included still more Republican-bashing and exonerated Obama from charges that she was overspending on her attire. The blog post—not by Tumulty but by another Post writer, Suzi Parker–made fun of former GOP New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu for questioning whether a designer dress that Mrs. Obama wore to deliver a campaign pitch for her husband’s reelection actually cost only $350. Parker chuckled at Sununu’s ignorance of fashion pricing—and also seized the opportunity to hurl some stray darts at Ann Romney, wife of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, for wearing an Oscar de la Renta dress that had “been priced at between $1,990 and $2,490” during the 2012 GOP convention.
My riposte: Rich people—the Bushes, the Clintons, the Romneys—can afford to buy expensive stuff.
And if I were Columba Bush, I’d start playing the victim card: the Latina victim card. I’m half-Hispanic myself, and believe me and my female relatives, Latina women are jewelry junkies. When I read Tumulty’s article, my first thought was: “That sounds just like [fill in the blank]!” So Columba, get in touch with your inner Eva Longoria and start whining about ethnic discrimination.