Obama unleashes star power at party

Former US President Barack Obama’s 60th birthday guest list unmasks who his real friends are, writes Miranda Devine.

Too many sensible people are having conniptions about Barack Obama’s 60th birthday bash on the weekend. No masks. No social distancing. No vaccine passports. Tents with sides. Red meat. Dancing. Singing. John Legend.

People having actual fun, and partying like it’s, well, 2019. Shame.

Honestly. Covid has turned half of the planet into wowsers and killjoys and dobbers and ­curtain-twitchers, not to mention nags, scolds, hysterics and ­busybodies.

It can all be summed up in one word: extreme control-freakery. Yes, I know. That was three words.

Singer Erykah Badu performed at former President Barack Obama’s birthday party and managed to take pictures of him and share them with her Instagram followers.

Either way, this is not a feasible personality trait if you want to have a happy life. Normal people might ­humour you for a while, but eventually they will shun you because no one wants to be around a perpetual downer. Life is too short for misery getting in your face about none of its business.

I may not agree with the former US president’s politics. But he knows how to party and these days that, ­literally, is a dying art.

We’re all for getting on with post-pandemic life. Vaccinations, tick. Mask if you want to, who cares. Stay at home if you’re scared. Otherwise, let’s party.

Obama’s guests are all consenting adults and, if we’re honest, most of the people taking pot-shots just wanted to be there too.

Beautiful Martha’s Vineyard, with its Kennedy history (the good, the bad and the very ugly), untouched beaches and the balmy August weather. Add delicious food and booze – even exotic “s’more” cocktails made with toasted marshmallows. Plus, luxury porta-potties with fresh flowers, antiperspirant wipes, breath fresheners and lint rollers. What’s not to love?

Then there are the guests. We’re not calling anyone shallow, but it was basically a celebrity fest. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Amal and George Clooney got an invite to the party. Picture: Getty Images

George and Amal Clooney were invited, naturally. Meghan and Harry were not.

Bradley Cooper, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Bruce Springsteen, Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg and the aforemen­tioned Legend, last heard in a bootleg TikTok video singing “Happy Birthday” to the 44th president. His “model” wife is best left unmentioned, lest her name cause a triggering event for someone with post-traumatic stress from being bullied by her, which seems to be 75 per cent of ­Instagram.

But we digress.

Obama faced some light criticism for having a big party – 700 guests and 200 staff – just as the Delta variant started raging across the country.

It was unfortunate timing, with mask mandates mooted and social distancing back in style. But being a politician Obama saw the writing on the wall and did what was needed to be done. Otherwise known as: never let a crisis go to waste.

You had to laugh.

Obama’s “trimmed down” party looked just about as big as ever. Maybe he got it down to 682 guests and 190 servants.

A staffer for the Obamas had the duty of informing some people that they were uninvited. Picture: AFP

He told us in sorrow that he had been forced by the Virus That Knows No Mercy to take the red marker to the guest list and scratch those who weren’t “family and close friends”.

It was Lord of the Flies on Martha’s Vineyard. For the Machiavellis among us, and you can bet there’s at least one in the $12 million Obama homestead, you just know this was a golden opportunity to settle scores, put a certain person in her place, and make the party 100 times more enjoyable for everyone else.

What can be more passively aggressively delicious than inviting someone you don’t like to the party of the season and then rescinding the ­invitation. Sorry not sorry.

The red marker is out. The die is cast. Barack and Michelle confer over Cheerios, decide who is for the high jump and the chopping block, and hand the task of informing the unchosen of their fate to their staffers.

On Tuesday night it was the grim duty of Melissa Winter, chief of staff to Michelle Obama, to co-ordinate what the New York Times called the “unlucky job” of placing phone calls asking a couple of guests not to come.

This is the moment to remove one particularly scabrous encumbrance under cover of Covid. Carpe Diem.

That’s right. Nancy Pelosi was disinvited. The 81-year-old House Speaker was dumped, dropped, discarded, scrapped, jettisoned, trashed, ditched, shunned, rejected, shut out, unwanted and unwelcome.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when she got the call. They should have sold tickets.

But do you think she got the hint?

Hide like a rhinoceros, she flew into the island on her private jet, ­anyway.

Then she skulked around crossly, telling anyone who asked that she had “other parties” to go to. Sure, lady.

Forget the pot-smoking DJs and Hunter Biden’s ex-wife.

This was the highlight of Obama’s 60th: the hilarious sight of a wistful Pelosi trailing around Martha’s Vineyard in her scarlet espadrilles after being dumped from Obama’s guest list.

You could almost hear her channelling Greta Thunberg: “How dare you!”

Covid has turned half the planet into wowsers and dobbers.

The frozen expression on Pelosi’s face told you she just couldn’t believe the insult.

Her, Fancy Nancy, the nation’s most powerful woman, disinvited? There must be some mistake. Don’t you know who I am?

It wasn’t hard to spot the Invited Guests swarming all over tony Edgartown all weekend, either. They were the ones with the joyous smiles and smug demeanour, not wearing masks.

These are her peeps, the “sophisticated vaccinated” crowd, as the New York Times reporter put it on CNN just to be sure everyone understands that there is absolutely no comparison whatsoever between the Obama party and such unsophisticated super spreader events as the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota the very same weekend.

“Tut Tut,” said Dr Fauci.

So shameless is Pelosi that she ­reportedly positioned herself in the clubhouse of the Vineyard Havens Country Club on Saturday afternoon so she might accidentally-on-purpose bump into the former president at the precise moment when he walked off the golf course with Don Cheadle, in the hope of shaming him into reinviting her to his sort-of-scaled-down-only-pretending 60th.

But nope.

Awkward as it was when he caught her baleful eyes upon him, to his eternal credit Obama held firm. Happy birthday Mr President.

You’ve earned it.

Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph