Well, Inauguration Week has come and gone. Even now, the last of our out-of-town guests are making their way out of our snowblanketed city, Ana Marie Cox is peacefully sleeping one off, and black bandanna-bedecked suburbanites are planning on returning to their regular jobs waiting tables at Denny’s. It was a week filled with pomp, protest, train derailments and the inexplicable vandalizing of Adams Morgan. Next time, maybe your friends at DCist will get credentialed.
But, as Washington digs out of the snow and puts the political pageantry behind us, DCist feels obligated to offer our services to our little buddies over at The Washington Times. Joseph Curl of the Times reported on Thursday that this year’s inaugural “cost less than President Clinton’s second inauguration in 1997, which cost about $42 million,” adding, “When the cost is adjusted for inflation, Mr. Clinton’s second-term celebration exceeds Mr. Bush’s by about 25 percent.”
Joseph? Take out a pen and paper, and make some notes: As reported by Salon’s Eric Boehlert, who sourced this through the Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, Newsday, and the St. Petersburg Times, Clinton’s second inaugural cost $29.7 million (which, adjusted for inflation, comes to about $35 million). We at DCist don’t doubt that’s still an obscene amount of cheddar to spend on a party, but we’re reserving judgment until someone actually invites us to a shindig with that sort of budget. In the meantime, Joe, you aren’t allowed to just make stuff up.
