Last week our president chose the setting of Ann Arbor, Michigan and a youthful audience at the University of Michigan to defend his argument for increasing the minimum wage from the current $7.25 per hour to $10.10 by 2016.  In an obviously staged, pre-speech lunch, the prez had a Reuben sandwich at Zingerman’s Deli.  He then used that luncheon experience to springboard into his argument for a higher minimum wage by noting that Zingerman’s pays its employees a fair wage, the implication being that Z’s nobly pays more than the minimum wage.

Well that’s all well and good until you get curious, as I did, and find Zingerman’s menu online.  Talk about sticker shock.  Were I, like most Americans, to walk into this place off the street and open that menu, I’d most likely be heading for the door, looking for an eating place more in line with my budget.

Now, I love a Reuben, and I’ve had them in delis and restaurants from coast to coast, but I have to tell you there is absolutely no way I’m paying more than sixteen bucks for one, except maybe at the now sadly defunct Stage Deli in Manhattan.  If you go here, you’ll see that’s pretty much the situation with Zingerman’s.  Eat there, and you’re gonna get zinged.

How those clever planners who set up these presidential stunts could not have foreseen this obvious trap they let their boss walk into is beyond me.  For crying out loud, you vacuous fools, the single strongest argument against raising the minimum wage is that it will result in higher prices to the public and reductions in employment.  Yet you let your boss go through his pre-speech prepping in a place that proves exactly the truth of that?  And then you let him use it as his springboard?  It’s fine that Zingerman’s shares its largesse with employees, but irony all but drips from this presidential lead-in: “Hey, I had a great sandwich at a place that fairly compensates its employees.”

Yeah, well, Mr. President, you got your sandwich in a place that charges prices that most Americans in flyover country would find unbelievable, unaffordable, and damnably near to being un-American.  Hey, Barry, you were in flyover country, not on one of the coastal enclaves where such egregious price-gouging is accepted as standard practice.  And we Americans are required to allow this clueless president and his out-of-touch advisors to represent us on the world stage?

Too bad Zingerman’s couldn’t have served Barry a 21^st-century variation of the Reuben, such as a Putin – a much meatier concoction, with a hint of bear flavor, definitely tougher to chew and damned near impossible to swallow.