No Beer Summit For The Republicans

President Obama has just given Slurpee something it could never buy: global street cred.

Hours after the leader of the free world jokingly suggested at Wednesday's day-after-election press conference that he might hold a "Slurpee Summit" with the new Republican leadership, the brand of slushy soft drinks is in overdrive to make the summit real.

"This is a rare opportunity for a brand," says Margaret Chabris, a spokeswoman for 7-Eleven, which owns 44-year-old Slurpee. "We don't want to be opportunistic, but nothing has ever been this big for Slurpee."

This is what brands dream about. Bud Light got a big PR lift after Obama drank a Bud Light at the White House "Beer Summit" in July 2009. That brought together Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and James Crowley, the police sergeant who arrested him.

During recent campaign speeches, Obama said Republicans stood around drinking Slurpees while Democrats did the hard legislative work. Now, Slurpee's getting the last laugh. Already in motion:

•Negotiations. White House officials were contacted late Wednesday by officials representing 7-Eleven with a proposal for the Slurpee brand to cater a Slurpee Summit between key Democrats and Republicans. The summit could be at the White House — or wherever the president chooses.

"If the president wants a Slurpee Summit, we're offering to cater it with red and blue Slurpees — and we'll even offer a purple Slurpee, since that's what you get when you bring red and blue together," Chabris says.

7-Eleven's request to the White House was made via the public relations firm New Partners, which has many employees who worked on the Obama campaign in 2008.

•Advertising. 7-Eleven on Friday will place an ad in national newspapers that plays off the idea of Slurpees bringing people together, says Chabris. One concept in discussion is a picture of a purple Slurpee with a red straw and a blue straw sticking out.

•Strategy. Slurpee is re-evaluating its brand strategy. It's looking at a new theme to be a drink that "brings people together," says Chabris.

Consultant David Aaker says it doesn't get any better. "If they actually have a summit, it's worth tens of millions of dollars in free advertising."

Strategy guru Mark Coopersmith says Slurpee should quickly go big in social media, nudging folks to have Slurpee Summits to solve problems.

"How often do you get the leader of the free world to associate your brand with all of these positive elements?"

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Book Claims Michelle Obama Stated Life In White House Is Hell

Michelle Obama thinks being first lady is "hell" and that she "can't stand it," according to juicy revelations put forth in a new book.

In the new book, written by Michael Darmon and Yves Derai, France's first lady Carla Bruni claims she asked Obama about being the president's wife during a private discussion earlier this year, according to London's Daily Mail newspaper.

"Don’t ask! It’s hell. I can’t stand it!" Obamareplied, according to Bruni's bombshell account in excerpts obtained by the newspaper.

Details of the closed-door conversation -- which took place during a visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy last March to the White House -- are part of the book, "Carla And The Ambitious."

Obama's spokeswoman, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, said today that the first lady never described her White House life as "hell."

The French Embassy in Washington also released a statement denying that Obama ever said those words. The Embassy said Bruni "distances herself completely" from the book, which is due out Friday.

According to the Daily Mail, the outspoken Bruni, 42, also laces into French government officials, accusing them of trying to "kill" her husband by loading him up with work -- and that Sarkozy lets himself be "bullied" into doing it, the newspaper reported.

Aside from dishing dirt on Obama and her hubby, Bruni also takes a swipe at Princess Diana when discussing a recent visit to an Aids hospital in Africa.

Bruni married Sarkozy in 2008 after the French president divorced his wife.

Their quickfire relationship raised eyebrows in France at the time -- especially given Bruni's assertion in a 2007 magazine interview that she was "crazily bored by monogamy."

Asked about that famous comment in a recent TV interview, Bruni pointed out that Sarkozy was her first husband.

"Well I was never married, so I think monogamy has to do with marriage, right?" she said.

Bruni once described herself as a "man tamer" and has had a number of affairs with intellectuals and rock stars, including Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, and has a young son from a previous relationship.

In the book, Bruni said she refused requests by French cameramen to snap a photograph of her carrying a baby in her arms "like Lady Di" -- adding that there is "something obscene in promoting yourself when you are giving of yourself."

The book, released to combat an unauthorized biography of Bruni out this week, will hit French store shelves later this year.

www.nypost.com

Quotation On The New Oval Office Rug Is Incorrect

(Sept. 5) – When President Barack Obama ponders big policy decisions, he might find inspiration from some of his favorite quotations inscribed on a new rug in the Oval Office.

The rug's perimeter is lined with sayings from Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Teddy Roosevelt. It also has a quote that Obama has described as his favorite from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Only it turns out – after the rug has already be sewn and laid down – that it's been incorrectly attributed to King.

AP

A saying on a new rug in the Oval Office is attributed to Martin Luther King Jr., but the quote actually came from an abolitionist minister from Massachusetts.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," is a phrase the civil rights leader used regularly. Obama even referred to it in his election victory speech in Chicago on Nov. 5, 2008.

But it turns out that whenever King used the phrase, he was actually echoing another speaker a century before him, whom he admired: the Massachusetts minister and abolitionist Theodore Parker, who in 1853 said, "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one. . . . But from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice."
The quote has often been attributed to King, but it seems Obama, his biographer David Remnick and none of the White House decorators bothered to look into its historic origins or even do a quick search on Wikipedia – which has an entry listing Parker is the original author of the phrase.

The mistake was first reported by The Washington Post, and reporters raised it with White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton on Saturday. Burton stood by the attribution to King, saying that the civil rights leader uttered those exact words on Sept. 2, 1957, according to CNN.

Another of the quotes on the new Oval Office rug is from Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address, in which the U.S. president referred to a "government of the people, by the people and for the people." It turns out that Lincoln, too, was paraphrasing Parker, who wrote in 1850 that a democracy is "a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people."
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US Aid Being Sent To Russia To Battle Wildfires

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States is sending firefighting equipment to Russia to help officials there respond to the 500 wildfires burning across the country.

The White House says President Barack Obama called Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (dih-MEE'-tree med-VYEH'-dyev) Thursday morning to express his condolences for the losses his country has suffered. The wildfires have been sparked by the hottest summer ever recorded in Russia, and Moscow's death rate has doubled to 700 people a day.

The White House says several U.S. agencies, including the Defense Department, and the state of California are airlifing firefighting equipment to Russia to help combat the fires.

www.wtop.com