Will this be the Chew & Screw election?

It was mid-April of this year, the hour was getting late in Washingwood, I was feeling a bit hungry, nothing in the refrigerator, so I thought, “How about a bite out?” No problem. One restaurant remained open. Highly exclusive.

Clooney’s. A great place, hidden in the hills. Clooney’s…? Oh, the proprietor? Yes. George Clooney.

(Now, a disclaimer: Mr. Clooney’s a very nice man, which is an anomaly in Washingwood. I don’t begrudge his roll-out and opening of Clooney’s. I do, however, take profound issue with a few things associated with the dinner.)

First of all, it wasn’t just a meal out, it was an event. More on that later. I was irritated at the seating arrangement or lack thereof. But that was nothing compared to my indignation at the cost of this dinner. Cap all that off with Mr. Clooney’s decision regarding whom he could and would serve and to whom he could and would (legally) deny service, and it was, how might one describe it? A doomed meal.

I have some experience with crashing events (I authored the screenplay “Wedding Crashers”) and, though I’m not saying I did crash the dinner-experience, I am, however, saying that, I…oh… it would have been possible for me to crash the dinner-experience. The vagaries are important here…

To begin with, I did not know that there was a guest of honor at the dinner. Hillary Clinton, as it turned out. Which was nice, I suppose. Secretary Clinton gets hungry like the rest of us human beings, so she certainly deserves a quiet meal out. I did not know the entire evening would revolve around Mrs. Clinton. Was it her birthday? No. Also Hillary brought her friends to Clooney’s, and these friends concocted some issue as to whether or not one could keep one’s cell phone while dining, lest something be recorded that Hillary might not want recorded, or God forbid, transcribed or therein emailed.

I further found it odd that my dining experience in terms of where I could or could not sit was in question (I had thought it so because I was dining alone. It’s difficult to find a table for one). I was wrong. Turns out my seating-standing had to do with which menu I chose. There were only two prix-fixe menus: the “cheap menu?” $33,400.00. The “expensive menu?” $353,400.00.

I went the cheap route. And, awkwardly ate my meal wedged between the other cheapskates who were standing, or, if they could grab the side of a couch or the end of a brick outdoors, sat down, precariously balancing their plates on their laps.

The food was the same on both menus. The only real difference is that if one chose the expensive menu, one got to eat their meal at George Clooney’s table. Not necessarily next to George Clooney, just… at his table. Which begs the silly, minor, unimportant question: WHO IN THE FUCK WOULD PAY 353,000 DOLLARS TO EAT NEAR GEORGE CLOONEY? Again, George Clooney? Great guy. But…really? I held my water, so to speak, in fear that it would cost me a hundred grand to piss next to George Clooney.

“Hillary Clinton has enough money. More than enough. She could run three Presidential campaigns and have some cash left over.”

There were more than a few courses at this meal, and they were wonderful. We began with an appetizer: a smoked salmon/gravlax type situation topped with crème fraiche and 20 antique gold coins. We followed that with a salad of mixed green hundred dollar bills, sun dried cashier’s checks, and crumbled million-dollar pledges all dressed with a cranberry you-now-have-major-league access-vinaigrette.

After a quick palate refresher (a frozen silver dollar placed on the tongue and then quickly removed), we continued with the entrée: A Short Rib “Pound of Flesh” Bourguignon. There was a fish option, A Thai Style Pan Roasted Pacific Salmon Wrapped in a Promise-That–The-Diner-Donor-Would-Be-Considered-For-An-Ambassadorship-To-Thailand.

After the entrée was served, dessert was offered. However before dessert was offered, guests were asked to take out their checkbooks; those who did received dessert, those who didn’t received their balls-roasted-on-a-skewer. Drizzled in a Reduction of Go-Fuck-Yourself.

Mrs. Clinton then graced us with her words. She broke new ground with her inspiring view that “Shit is gonna get better than it is now. Not that it’s bad because I love President Obama, it’s just…trust me…gonna get better.” (I think she had a few. Or was tired.) She also addressed the issue of the minimum wage: Her plan, as opposed to Senator Sanders’ plan for $15 perhour minimum wage, is for a $12 per hour minimum wage that accounting for a certain mysterious algorithm involving where you live, divided by the weather, plus how ten other amorphous situations factor in could climb to $15 minimum wage. (A brief aside: Having been to my share of these types of fundraisers there is nothing, I mean nothing as vomitous as a room full of super-wealthy people applauding what a super-wealthy candidate promises to do for the working poor. In general, they don’t give a shit…except when they attend a super-wealthy fundraiser.)

As for me, I was ready to puke. The food was too… rich. Even Mr. Clooney felt the evening was, in his words, “obscene.” And the reason for this obscenity is that the meal, depending on who’s doing the counting, raised anywhere from six to ten million dollars for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. I thought it was… honest of Mr. Clooney to remark that this amount of money raised was “obscene,” yet I had to wonder why he didn’t ponder the vulgarities of an evening like this before hosting an evening like this. Appropriately, Mr. Clooney closed down Clooney’s the next day.

I’m speculating that were it Bernie’s dinner, it would be on Coney Island at Nathan’s Hot Dogs, and if you didn’t have enough scratch he’d probably buy you a dog…and a small drink. Were it Trump’s dinner you wouldn’t be invited.

The point of all this is that we have to get the money out of politics or all we Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian, Socialist, Anarchist voters will have resigned ourselves to having 85 assholes in a huge living room picking our president. Each with enough fuck-you money to buy the island where they stash their cash. I’m not comfortable with that, nor should you be, and we’ve been doing it for far too long. We used to “publicly finance” campaigns. But that quaint notion changed over time, and when the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that your pocket lint counted as “speech,” and your dreams could be commodified into campaign contributions, the die was cast.

Hillary Clinton has enough money. More than enough. She could run three Presidential campaigns and have some cash left over. I would have been a lot happier had all that money gone to the type of dinner guest that I’m concerned with. The ones that can’t afford to eat. You want to change the world? Take that money and feed the hungry and/or teach them how to feed themselves.

In any event…. I did leave a tip. Why?

My waiter? 12 bucks an hour.

PHOTOS: Getty Images/Chris Maddaloni/ Istock.com