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A dinner and a Broadway show

NEW YORK: U.S. President Barack Obama made good on a campaign promise to his most important supporter on Saturday night — his wife, Michelle.

The President and the First Lady jetted to a date in New York late on Saturday afternoon, aides and media in tow. “I am taking my wife to New York City because I promised her during the campaign that I would take her to a Broadway show after it was all finished,” said the President in a statement an aide read to the press.

After dining a little more than two hours at Blue Hill, a West Village restaurant touted by New York magazine as a “seminal Greenmarket haven” that features food grown by chef and owner Dan Barber on his upstate farm, the Obamas headed to the Belasco Theater to make it in time for “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”

The play by August Wilson is about Africans in the U.S. in the early 1900s, with residents of a boardinghouse recalling their migration from the sharecropping farms of the South to the industrialised North.

As the motorcade left the West Village and drove up Sixth Avenue to the theatre, crowds of people gathered on the sidewalks of the blockaded streets to wave. Some cheered. Cab drivers opened their doors and stood on the frames of their taxis to catch a glimpse of them.

The White House declined to say how much the trip was costing taxpayers, and even before the smaller jet left Washington, the there-and-back trip drew criticism from the Republican National Committee. The RNC issued a news release that chastised Mr. Obama for saying he understands American’s troubles, but then hopping up to New York for “a night on the town.”

Noting that General Motors is expected to file for bankruptcy protection on Monday, the news release said: “Putting on a show: Obamas wing into the city for an evening out while another iconic American company prepares for bankruptcy.”

In an interview before his inauguration, Mr. Obama said he and his wife like having “date nights,” usually on Fridays. Since moving to Washington, the Obamas have managed to fit in at least a few nights out in the nation’s capital.

While on a trip to New York last week, Ms. Michelle Obama was reminded about the couple’s first date. “You know, after 20-some-odd years of knowing a guy, you forget that your first date was at a museum,” she said. “But it was, and it was obviously wonderful. It worked.”

Before travelling to New York, the Obamas watched daughter Malia’s soccer game for an hour Saturday morning. — AP

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