Weekend At Bernie's Lake House? Maybe If You Chill

Without the dead corpse of his campaign to drag around with him anymore, Sen. Bernie Sanders has decided to treat himself and his family to a lake house. Local Vermont newspaper Seven Days reported on Monday that Sanders is now "the proud new owner of a summer home in the Champlain Islands," which he purchased for almost $600,000. Unfortunately, this news has prompted people to go berserk with hypocrisy claims. Now, I love pointing out hypocrisy as much as the next person, but Sanders buying a third home is not hypocrisy, people — it’s really OK.

Let's remember who we're talking about here — a 74-year old man, way past due for retirement, who went to the Soviet Union for his honeymoon. Sanders has spent his entire adult life fighting for the lower and middle classes through public service, and now, he's buying a modest lake house in Vermont so that he can spend some relaxing time with his grandchildren before he gets too old to eat solid food. If that means he can't call himself a socialist, I'm OK with calling him a "socialish."

But here we have Fox & Friends and some other folks who feel Sanders' home purchase is headline newsworthy:

No! Stop laughing! Sanders' new home has four bedrooms. It's going to hold Bernie and Jane, their four children, their spouses, and seven grandchildren. It has 500 feet of beachfront. It is not a Mar-a-Lago resort. Yet commenters on Reddit are upset. Yes, it's true that owning a third home is not typical of a middle-class American. But Sanders is, in fact, part of the top 4 percent of income earners in the country, according to Vanity Fair's Tina Nguyen. That position is due almost completely to Sanders' salary as a U.S. senator. The people of Vermont elected him to get paid that much! Even with that said, Sanders' net worth "is among the lowest in the Senate," wrote Nguyen.

Despite what certain disappointed people on the internet may like to proclaim, those donating to $27 at a time to Sander's campaign weren't supporting this real estate venture. Jane Sanders said in a statement that they were only able to afford the house after the recent sale of her own family's home in Maine. Also according to Washington Post, Jane said she "always hoped" to have a home in the Vermont islands. So, yes, Sanders, you start a political revolution, rise up against campaign finance reform, elitism and corruption, but please, anything but allow your wife to realize her life's dream of waking up beside a placid lake next to her loved ones for a few weeks out of the year.

There is absolutely no reason for this, Twitter! Sanders is making a Vermont town of fewer than 1,000 people utterly happy by buying a home there. A local resident told Seven Weeks, “He’ll be a welcome neighbor, everybody up here loves him." He added, “We’re all ornery and so is he!” Letting Sanders be ornery with his ornery friends seems like the least we can do!

Image: Dawn Foster/Bustle