Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Everybody saw this coming.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

I was promised a recession.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The revolution will be supervised.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Women's Rights / Vagina Outrage / Nancy, How Could You?

Nancy, How Could You?

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Sally Quinn has written the official Village response to Nancy Brinker, head of the Komen foundation:

[…] Could this possibly be the Nancy Brinker who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President Obama in 2009? Could it be the Nancy Brinker who is the Goodwill Ambassador for the World Health Organization, former ambassador to Hungary and former chief of protocol under George W. Bush? […]

Nancy, you have been honored and awarded and feted and celebrated for the work you have done. Just last fall you had your awards dinner at the Kennedy Center partially underwritten by our friend, David Rubenstein, head of the Kennedy Center. It was a major social event in Washington, filled with many of those who are appalled by your recent actions.

These honors could disappear in a flash if people begin to think that your organization can be pressured, influenced or bought by a small group of people who are politically motivated.

After reading this, Brinker sent in a letter of apology, but it’s too little too late. Nancy Brinker will be feted and celebrated no more in the Village. She’s shown her true colors, and if Sally Quinn has anything to do with it, she won’t be long for the Komen foundation.

Reader Interactions

48Comments

  2. 2.

    arguingwithsignposts

    Wow. Surprised, I guess, to agree with madame quinn so much in that piece (apart from the village bullshit).

  3. 3.

    Schlemizel

    sadly, this is the worst punishment our beloved media could ever imagine.

    with no apologies to Sir Scott
    Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,
    Who never to himself hath said,
    This is my own, my Kool Kids Kocktail party!

  4. 4.

    Mino

    Uh, are you sure that this means what you think it means? Sally may have been complaining about firing the toad.

  5. 5.

    Cat Lady

    Sally did a great job there summarizing the whole mess, and Nancy did say “I made a mistake”, but she needs to say what the mistake was. I don’t think she and I would agree on what that was.

  6. 6.

    r€nato

    I don’t want Sally Quinn on my side. Those quotes made me want to puke. Anything that validates the power of the Villagers and their idea that ‘DC is *our* house’, is a Bad Thing.

  7. 7.

    rumpole

    Former Bush Ambassador heads up large organization, installs action plan in the absence of facts or political reality.

    Disaster ensues for organization. Denials prove to be lies. Constituency alienated.

    Whocoodanode?

  8. 8.

    Wag

    Ms Quinn showed the one true way to end the culture wars. Shame. It’s the only thing the Village understands. And after reading the response, shame seems to have worried in this case.

  10. 10.

    MattF

    Oh, boy. I couldn’t have imagined anything would me feel sympathetic to Brinker, but I guess I lack imagination. Sally Fucking Quinn.

  11. 11.

    gypsy howell

    Ha! Her final 2 lines:

    “It is up to you, not a PR firm to get out in front and persuade people that this is not a political organization, that Planned Parenthood will continue to get new grants and that your Foundation is single-mindedly devoted to battling breast cancer. If in fact, that’s the truth”

    ******
    Cold. Ice cold.

  12. 12.

    Maude

    Maybe they can go to a cocktail party together.
    Once there, they can tear each other’s hair out.
    Good morning AWSP. And good morning to Lady Smudge.

  14. 14.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @MattF: Really? Did you read the actual article? I got the impression that Quinn, like a lot of women I have read, felt personally betrayed by SGK turning their health into a political issue.

  15. 15.

    Dr. Squid

    If the Village view is that Planned Parenthood should be untouchable, then why do they try to assist so much in taking PP down?

  18. 18.

    jibeaux

    The last thing I want to do is go down the whole “waves/generations/whatever the hells” of feminism path and discuss the differences therein, but Sally Quinn was born in 1941 per the wiki. She’s of the generation that watched as the Pill changed the world and saw the entire feminist movement unfold to drag the country kicking and screaming forward with no small degree of success, only to get to 2012 and hear a bunch of idiots try to roll back the clock and listen to a bunch of old men in no particular need of contraception wax rhapsodic about it and women’s health. It’s got to bring out your mama bear, in a big way.

  19. 19.

    Narcissus

    I was enjoying watching Brinker’s fall, but watching Quinn make her a Village Unperson just makes me feel dirty.

  20. 20.

    MattF

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent): Yes, I read the article.

    It’s fair to say that Quinn is a personal bugbear for me, so feel free to disregard my comment, on the basis that I’m not going to be rational about what she writes.

    You may regard this as off-topic, but… Did you know, by the way, that Michael Kelly, the writer/editor/columnist who led the charge in the Village’s Obsessive Clinton Disorder was himself a born-and-bred Villager? His mother, Marguerite, still writes a weekly ‘family advice’ column for the WaPo.

  21. 21.

    balconesfault

    Sitting where they sit … with the reach that they have … wouldn’t it be awesome if the WaPo began a series investigating all sorts of high profile/high dollar charity fundraising organizations, and track down where the money is really going, and what kind of secondary agendas they may be pursuing?

    One can dream …

  23. 23.

    debit

    Wow. I honestly did not expect that. See, when I read something like this, I begin to hope that the Village realizes what they’re doing. That they now understand that in pretending the crazy 27 percent is the true voice of the people they are aligning with people who say things like “We are a proud nation of double flushers!” But then they turn around and disappoint me again every time.

    I only take solace in the fact when our country turns into a religious dystopian nightmare right out of Margaret Atwood, and it’s gingham dresses and braids to our knees, Sally Quinn will be right there with us.

  25. 25.

    beltane

    Ordinarily I would be disgusted by the language used by Sally Quinn here. However, when we are dealing with one socialite speaking to another socialite we have to expect to hear the language of socialites being used in the dressing-down. Nancy Brinker has been removed from the A-list and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer tool.

  27. 27.

    kc

    From Brinker’s letter:

    Because you know our work, Sally, you know that we would never, ever, leave women unserved, especially the low-income, uninsured and underinsured women who are relying on us more than ever in an uncertain economy

    ‘Cept for that one time when we tried to do just that …

  28. 28.

    handsmile

    Ah, mon dieu! The ultimate humiliation for the Ambassador: to be dressed down in public by the Madame de Pompadour of the Village Versailles!

    To be sure, she deserved nothing less. The Ambassador had breached one of the cardinal rules of the Potomac aristocracy: her actions had embarrassed members of its most exalted circle such as Miss Quinn and Mrs. Greenspan.

    Social disgrace and exile to her hometown of Peoria now await nancy brinker.

    Hostesses of Versailles’ most exclusive salons, however, are ever so grateful that all this unpleasantness occurred after the holiday galas and fetes. Imagine how awkward it would have been!

  30. 30.

    beltane

    @handsmile: Can’t you just imagine all these ladies dressed in 18th century period costumes complete with powdered wigs and beauty patches? What a cold reception at Court Lady Brinker will now receive.

  32. 32.

    handsmile

    @beltane: (#30)

    Well, evidently you are not invited to their functions, otherwise you would not have to speculate, like a peasant, about proper attire! And I don’t expect Mrs. brinker is now being received in the better homes along the Potomac.

  33. 33.

    MonkeyBoy

    Not only did Quinn kick Brinker off the A-list in D.C., she effectively kicked her of the A-list in Palm Beach, which is full of very rich socialites who get their status from how important their charity work is.

    (I had an in-law relative who was a rich Palm Beach socialite that at one time headed (or was 2nd in command) of Planned Parenthood.)

    Brinker has just had her real reason for existence cut from under her.

  34. 34.

    WereBear

    Hell, Brinker already raked in bushels of cash, got medals, and had her Kennedy Center whoop-de-do. This IS probably the worst part of it, for her, getting snobbed by Sally Quinn; freaking 1%, how do they do it?

  36. 36.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @MonkeyBoy:

    Brinker has just had her real reason for existence cut from under her.

    Cripes, there goes the Schadenfreude meter again.

    This past couple of weeks have been very very hard on the old Schadenfreude meter.

  40. 40.

    Bulworth

    Wow, Quinn is pretty harsh (deservedly so). She really calls out the inconsistency in Komen’s responses and the clusterfock that was hiring Handel in the first place.

  41. 41.

    Mo

    As someone raised in the outer orbits of the Village, here’s my take: the anti-abortion crowd was allowed the fiction of pretending that all they cared about was the babies. The Republican class of 2010 and the candidate debates revealed that they were coming for contraception.

    This is the women of the Village letting the loudmouth Catholic blowhards that there will be consequences for this attitude. The career ladder in both journalism and politics calls for long stretches of low/no paying internship internships and free-lancing without insurance. I’m sure most of these women went through a stretch where Planned Parenthood covered their healthcare needs.

    What has been missing from coverage of the Komen debate is how many women in their 50s and 60s, either laid-off, free lancing, or divorced are caught in the waiting for Medicare trap. Planned Parenthood is helping this demographic with cancer screening and lady healthcare. Women marry an older husband, but don’t think about what will happen when he retires and goes on Medicare, but the wife isn’t eligible until she’s 65. Let me tell you, that gets ugly. My guess is that all those grandmothers in the Komen walks have friends in that situation.

    The Komen v Planned Parenthood spat wasn’t about abortion. It was about birth control and women’s health. And well-off women knowing that they could be poor women very quickly, especially after the housing crash.

  42. 42.

    Johnny B

    It’s great and all that Quinn, the Queen of the Villagers, weighed in on the matter. But let’s be honest. Like Brinker, she too believes that an organization should be

    “pressured, influenced or bought by a small group of people who are politically motivated.”

    The difference is in scale. Brinker thinks that of Komen. Quinn thinks that of our federally elected officials.

  43. 43.

    WaterGirl

    You know, I tried to read the letter that Nancy Brinker sent in reply to Sally Quinn. I really did try to read it, but it was all bullshit and I realized that there’s not a single thing she, or anyone at Komen, could say to make me not see them as a right-wing political organization. I simply loathe her and what the organization has become.

  44. 44.

    Bruce S

    I have to say that this letter from Sally Quinn is so dripping with…uh…Sally Quinn, that I find it almost as puke-worthy as Brinker.

  45. 45.

    Maus

    @18:

    It’s got to bring out your mama bear, in a big way.

    I don’t understand why you believe this is necessarily the case. I’m voting that this is more about personal embarrassment than concern for women’s rights. The Village doesn’t concern itself with politics over social events.

  46. 46.

    mdblanche

    Could Sally Quinn please speak a little louder? I can barely hear her over all these bishops yelling.

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