Barack Obama’s ‘cancelled’ 60th birthday party: why the former president’s planned celebrity bash at Martha’s Vineyard caused a furore, whatever the Covid-19 protocols
- Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg and George Clooney were reportedly on the guest list with The Roots, John Legend and Common expected to perform – before a last-minute ‘scale down’
- Everyone invited needed Covid-19 vaccine proof, but netizens were still angry the former president was forging ahead with an epic celebration while the pandemic raged
With or without a global pandemic, Barack Obama apparently wasn’t prepared to let his 60th birthday go by without some kind of a celebration.
The Obamas were expected to mark today’s milestone birthday with an outdoor party on Saturday, which would have gathered several hundred of the former president’s friends, family and former staff members at their home in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
However early on Wednesday morning a spokesperson for the president announced the event had been “significantly scale back the event to include only family and close friends” – following a significant media backlash that such an event was to continue as Covid-19 cases suddenly spiked in the US.
According to media reports A-listers including Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Spielberg and George Clooney were on the original guest list, while The Roots, John Legend and Common were among the musical acts speculated to offer entertainment.
Even before the “scale back”, all the original 475 expected attendees were required to adhere to all Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) public health protocols, including a testing regimen managed by a Covid-19 coordinator – but such a celebration still stroke observers as tone deaf amid a global pandemic.
I’m also turning 60 this month … I’m vaccinated and cancelled a party of four
Concerns about Covid-19 transmission were reignited in recent weeks after the Delta coronavirus variant caused a sharp spike in cases. For the first time in more than three months, cases in the US average more than 60,000 per day, according to analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.
The Obamas have been strong advocates for the vaccine, emphasising “the need and the urgency of our communities getting vaccinated” in a video with Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley in April, after getting vaccinated themselves one month earlier.
“Now, as the vaccine becomes more available, I want to make sure that our communities, particularly ones – African-American, Latino – as well as young people understand that this will save lives and allow people to get their lives back to normal,” Obama said at the time. “The sooner we get more people vaccinated the better off we’re going to be.”
