Why I spent $3 for the chance to have dinner with the First Lady and President Barack Obama

By Kathleen Kenna

I’ve been unemployed more than two years and I admit it, I just blew $3 on a big gamble — dinner with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

I’m not a gambler, but I couldn’t resist the tease that came with an email invite.

“Want to meet Barack and Michelle?”

This was in bold face, so I’m trying to reproduce its breathless appeal.

Yes, yes, yes I do!

I admire the couple, because they’re smarter than me.

I’m a huge fan of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign.

I admire her muscles.  I like her style, especially when she’s harvesting organic vegetables from the garden she planted on our White House grounds.

I’m grateful to President Obama for fighting for universal health care in this country, a place that not only has rejected me — a victim of terrorism — for health benefits, but also denied insurance to two healthy Americans, aged 26 and 28, half my age.

I believed then-Senator Barack Obama when he campaigned on promises of “hope” and “change.”

I’m still waiting for positive change.  (We began Hire Your Neighbor because of negative change in the U.S.)

But I’m a huge believer in hope.  It’s what keeps me going, despite unemployment, despite disability, despite chronic pain, despite discrimination.

(And, as a non-American, I still think it’s great that one of your presidents was born in a place called Hope.  As Jack Torry says, you can’t make this stuff up.)

I admire President Obama for “turning the other cheek”, despite all the public hate that passes as “opinion” in the U.S.

I admire President Obama for having the courage, unlike other presidents, to meet flag-draped coffins when they return home from Afghanistan and Iraq.

I admire him for allowing these sombre ceremonies to be photographed (and not the private meetings with families of dead soldiers, as did one of his predecessors).

So I want to have dinner with Barack Obama and his wife.

I want to thank them personally, for their courage and determination and hope.

I want to thank them for raising strong daughters, setting an example of good health and family joy (and no-TV homework nights!) for all of us.

I want to ask them the same questions our three-person Hire Your Neighbor team is asking all Americans:

1.  How many jobs have you created in this recession?

2.  How many jobs have been lost on your watch?

3.  What are you proposing to get 25 million Americans back to work?  What’s preventing you from doing this?

4.  Hire a neighbor, friends, hire a neighbor.

Me and Hadi and Hoover will have dinner anytime with anyone from any political party, anyone from Corporate America, any small business owner, anyone who has a solution to this country’s historic unemployment.

As long as they pick up the tab.

Obama’s invitation came with an offer of airfare and the meal, for “an approximate value of $4,800.”

Want a chance to have dinner with “Barack, Michelle and a guest of your choice”?

Minimum suggested donation is $3.  You could probably donate less.

Entries must be received by midnight on Dec. 31.

To qualify, you must be an American citizen (Hoover and Hadi), or “lawfully admitted permanent resident of the United States” (me).  You must be at least 16.

And sorry, Stephen Colbert, you can’t be a PAC or lobbyist or “foreign agent” to get in on this.

We suspect donors who pay the max — $2,500 — might get a seat at the table before we, the unemployed.

We’re prepared to be amazed if that’s not so (remembering how President Bill Clinton let fat cat donors sleep in our White House).

Expect a follow-up email, no matter what you donate.

As soon as we put the $3 on our Visa, we got another email, asking for more.

They wanted $25.

Hey, Mr. President, we’re unemployed!