Champagne, Sand, and Soros: Summer Politics on Martha’s Vineyard

For the fashionable Martha’s Vineyard warm weather habitue, nothing says summer like champagne, lobster, sand, surf — and George Soros. The famously well-heeled island enclave located just south of Cape Cod, MA, is a “progressive” world unto itself, completely cut off from the troubles of mainstream Americans. And there is nothing wealthy leftists enjoy more than having an opportunity to pat themselves on the back for their personal political beliefs.

The Martha’s Vineyard Summer Institute speaker series “features weekly discussions on topics ranging from politics and the arts to media and democracy,” local paper The Vineyard Gazette explained. “Pre-eminent human rights activist” Laleh Ispahani, executive director of Soros’ Open Society-US, the American domestic arm of the notorious globalist billionaire’s flagship Open Society Foundations (OSF) operation, kicked off this year’s sessions with a July 9 address on “Protecting Human Rights by Protecting Democracy,” the forum’s website heralded. Ispahani was a late substitute for OSF President Binaifer Nowrojee, who had to cancel due to a personal emergency. Yes, the top leadership official in the Soros political machine had planned to be the inaugural speaker for the 2026 season on the Vineyard.

Salt Air and a Little Soros Style Revolutionary Lingo

Ispahani warned the tanned and tony summering islanders that they were under threat. “Over time, of course, I recognized – as you all do – that the US democracy has never fully lived up to its promise,” she told her affluent audience, The Gazette related. “Equality under the law is being tested like never before. Rights are seen as negotiable, and free speech and accountability are under threat.”

“What we’re seeing is a systematic expansion of government overreach, and it is dangerous,” Ispahani continued. “We’re watching patterns that once defined distant regimes surfacing here, at home.”

It is indeed a frightening time to be a Vineyard progressive. Oh, by the way, the “median sale price of a home in Martha’s Vineyard was $2.45 million over the last three months,” real estate site Redfin reports.

A Soros mouthpiece, Ispahani praised the anti-US Immigration and Customs Enforcement rioters in Minneapolis for their bold stand against the burgeoning tyranny. “This is how we push back on the encroachment and the erosion as it’s happening,” she proclaimed. “You throw sand at the gears of this oppression, both at home and abroad.”

Of course, the only actual sand most Martha’s Vineyard regulars ever touch comes from the grains spilling onto their $300 sandals as they disembark their yachts and return to their multi-million-dollar cottages in time for dinner. But a dash of existential angst surely makes all the luxuries go down all the finer.

Other scheduled speakers for the 2026 series include just whom you’d expect: former A-list political lefties now resigned to playing summer stock. Not surprisingly, one faded cable TV network in particular is overly represented. Former CNN White House correspondent John Harwood and current CNN host Van Jones both are on this year’s docket. As is pro-illegal-alien former Obama administration Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and painfully outdated yet still working New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman.

Fauci Vineyard Beach Blanket Party

Previous years’ speakers are even more predictable in serving as human comfort food for financially comfortable progressives. Dr. Anthony Fauci hit the Vineyard in 2025, reveling in his self-anointed dual role of medical hero and political victim. “In that period of less than a year, we did something that was completely unprecedented, because it usually takes an average of 7 to 10 or more years to develop a vaccine. We did it in 11 months,” Fauci told the island gathering of his work during the pandemic, The Gazette reported last summer. It is telling that neither Fauci nor his audience grasped that this statement would be more alarming than salutary to tens of millions of Americans in light of the numerous dangerous health issues now known to surround the COVID vaccines.

“There was a degree of divisiveness which made it impossible to mount a unified, effective public health response,” Fauci exclaimed, repeating the stale circa-2022 canard that “more Republicans living in red states were hospitalized and died from the virus than Democrats living in blue states,” as The Gazette put it.

“That doesn’t make any sense at all, that your political affiliation should determine whether you live or die from an infectious disease,” Fauci said. “We should have realized that the common enemy was the virus, and we as a country were acting like the common enemy was each other. That’s exactly what went on for years, and unfortunately, it’s present even to this day.”

Needless to say, all this is catnip for rich progressives living in an isolated social bubble centered around CNN and The New York Times. The great unwashed out there – we wanted to help them, but they would not listen. It’s all so tragic. Pass the quail egg canapés, please.

Toobin Mania: Let Me In, ‘I’m a Donor!’

To say the parody writes itself here is no exaggeration. Disgraced former CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has twice headlined the Martha’s Vineyard Summer Institute speaker series, appearing in 2012 and 2019. His initial appearance had island residents fawning like teenage girls at an Elvis Presley concert in 1956.

Here’s The Vineyard Gazette account from July 2012:

“It’s summer on the Vineyard; crowds are expected. But nobody, from event organizers to the hundreds of people who gathered outside the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center last Thursday night, expected mayhem at a speaking event about the Supreme Court.

“That night, CNN legal analyst and New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin was elevated to bona fide rock star status (think Justin Bieber for the intellectual set) … There was a sudden crush at the door as people tried to get in, and even as the event started, disappointed would-be audience members clamored about, looking for a way inside …

“Inside the center, which seats 325, people rushed for chairs, donors snagging reserved spots and several people holding space for friends or family members. One well-prepared attendee brought her own beach chair, and several people tried to get in through the center’s back door.”

“A line here, a line there, people are desperate, shouting ‘I’m a donor!’” seasonal resident Michael Parker told the paper. “I don’t think they anticipated this,” he added. “We’ll catch the guy on CNN. We’re disappointed, but we’ll live.”

How do you explain it? Hundreds of uber-wealthy Martha’s Vineyarders scratching and clawing among themselves to see Jeffrey Toobin? In the end, it’s really not about him at all. For the financially privileged American progressive, it is about having their worldview personally affirmed to their face. As we have noted before, affluent leftists are not just willing but eager to shell out money to have their opinions regurgitated before them, granting them the exquisite pleasure of applauding themselves.