The Elaine L. Chao Auditorium at the University of Louisville
Senator Mitch McConnell knows what women want. For Valentine’s Day 2006, Mitch presented his wife Elaine with an auditorium named in her honor - part of a $14.2 million earmark to enhance the Mitch McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, the Senator’s alma mater.
We went to the Elaine L. Chao Auditorium, housed in the bottom floor of the University of Louisville’s Ekstrom Library.
Outside the entrance to the auditorium are a series of three display cases that serve as shrines to Mitch & Elaine. One display features videos like a personal welcome from President George W. Bush to the McConnell Center and Chao Auditorium. Another features Louisville slugger bats signed by visiting dignitaries; the background for that display is Joe Lieberman swinging a bat.
And finally, the most glorious display of all: “Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao: United in Public Service.” This shrine showcases memorabilia from the storied careers of public service of Mitch and Elaine, including campaign literature from McConnell’s campaign for high school president, and the baton Elaine carried for a celebration in her high school.
If you look carefully, you’ll see the tickets with which Elaine’s family came to the United States from China. Getting into the personal, Elaine’s side of the display has her third grade notebook, which her mother later re-used as a recipe book.
The auditorium and accompanying shrines were a surreal experience. You don’t see this kind of glorification for dead public figures, let alone ones still serving. I wonder how taxpayers feel about contributing $14,200,000 to Mitch’s present to Elaine?
February 16th, 2008 at 12:04 am
“Copying Compositions and writing essays in English AS SEEN IN this notebook” ???
I took a careful look at the notebook that supposedly had Elaine Chows English-language essays from Third grade and couldn’t actually see an essay under those Chinese recipes. Looked like some poor drawings of some blonde bikinied Barbie doll drawings. And on the other page are some scrawled doodles. No essays or compositions are DISPLYED. Not exactly the stuff an Asian-American girl should be proud of displaying as an indicator of self-worth I would think.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
[…] auditorium at the University of Louisville named in her honor, compliments of her husband’s $14.2 million earmark, at taxpayers’ expense. Elaine never attended the university, although it is her […]