Meh. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
So, remember the other day when WTOP’s Mark Plotkin got cheesed with the White House when he found out that Mayor Vince Gray would not be attending the State of the Union Tuesday night?
President Barack Obama, the ultimate ingrate. No invitation to Mayor Vincent Gray of DC to the SOTU. 93% in 2008, every precinct. #wtop
— Mark Plotkin (@MarkPlotkinWTOP) January 24, 2012
BFD, the City Paper said at the time. Besides, turns out the mayor already had plans. While President Obama was giving his 65-minute speech on Tuesday—not mentioning D.C. statehood once, by the way (Where were the incensed tweets then, Plotkin?)—Gray was out celebrating his girlfriend Linda Mercado Greene’s birthday. Rather than sit under the hot lights of the House gallery, Gray was fêting his significant other at a party at Café Milano on the other side of town, the Reliable Source reported last night.
And it’s not like Gray didn’t have an invite to attend Obama’s speech. He just didn’t have one from Obama. Instead, the mayor was invited by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, with whom he attended last year’s State of the Union address.
Should the mayor have even been expected to attend the speech? It’s tricky, the Reliable Source column continues:
D.C. mayors rarely score an invite, which irks the heck out of statehood proponents [like Plotkin] who believe the District should be prominently represented at the high-profile event. And even when they do, it’s always something: Critics got mad at Anthony Williams when he accepted invitations to the event despite the lack of D.C. voting rights. Others took offense when Adrian Fenty snubbed Laura Bush and attended as a guest of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
And when the only mention of the city of Washington is as some kind of abstract fight club—”I’ve talked tonight about the deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. But the divide between this city and the rest of the country is at least as bad—and it seems to get worse every year,” the president said in his brief mention of this town—why not skip the speech and throw a party?
Not that that’s deterred Plotkin:
I asked Mayor Gray if he felt not being invited to the SOTU was a snub or an insult. He said “No.” We will never get any power or respect.
— Mark Plotkin (@MarkPlotkinWTOP) January 25, 2012
Even though Gray was, actually, asked if he’d like to attend the speech, just not by whom Plotkin hoped. In this case, with other plans already made, does it matter whose invitation Gray turned down?