I re-read this article from 1998 at least once a year, and I suggest you do the same. Now seems like an especially appropriate time:
They call the capital city their “town.”
And their town has been turned upside down.
With some exceptions, the Washington Establishment is outraged by the president’s behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The polls show that a majority of Americans do not share that outrage. Around the nation, people are disgusted but want to move on; in Washington, despite Clinton’s gains with the budget and the Mideast peace talks, people want some formal acknowledgment that the president’s behavior has been unacceptable. They want this, they say, not just for the sake of the community, but for the sake of the country and the presidency as well.
Maude
Faux outrage.
ETA, or, close but no cigar.
beltane
I’ll never forget the moment CNN died for me. It was when a shocked, breathless Wolf Blitzer appeared on my TV screen and told me that Bill Clinton might have to do jail time because adultery was a crime in the state of Maryland. I knew right there and then that the Villagers do not live the types of lives normal people lead.
Brian R.
This is why audiences cheer whenever Roland Emmerich has the aliens/ice age/terrorists obliterate D.C. in his movies.
PeakVT
No journalists should live in the DC metro area. They should do six-month tours of duty there and then go back to wherever to clear their heads by working the police blotter or some-such.
Violet
Quote that sums it up:
Bonus points that it’s Broder who said it.
RinaX
I’m missing how the press’s treatment of President Obama is any different than at any other point during his presidency. Why the fuck am I supposed to care that they’re going to continue to be assholes because of how inferior he makes them feel? And since I didn’t give a fuck what Jon Stewart had to say even before 2008, why should I give a shit now?
SatanicPanic
You could at least warn us that it’s a Sally Quinn article, I wouldn’t have bothered to get out of the boat.
Bulworth
@Violet: A quote that will live in infamy.
Violet
Another favorite paragraph:
Muffie. Seriously.
Maude
@Violet:
Another quote by Muffie was. It just isn’t done.
Violet
This is the very best article for summing up exactly what the Villager mindset is. If anyone ever starts to think things have changed, re-read it to ground yourself. It hasn’t changed. They are who you think they are.
beltane
@Violet:
Being that this “little village” is populated exclusively by idiots it’s no wonder they’re demoralized, If anyone of us came up with the name “Muffie Cabot” to describe one of these people we’d be ridiculed for being over the top. This is a name straight out of the “Preppy Handbook” circa 1982.
mai naem
@Violet: Her husband’s Thurston Cabot IV. The kids are Biff who of course is at Andoverand and Dafffodil who is at Mrs. White’s.
Corner Stone
Not to go too far OT, as I think this is in the same theme as “having no fucking clue”, but I really feel for these poor dears:
U.S. 2 Percenters Trade Down With Post-Recession Angst
“Jennifer Prentice, a medical-equipment saleswoman in Minneapolis, once had no qualms about dropping $600 or more for Gucci purses. Now she spends $300 for Coach Inc. (COH) bags and is filling in her Burberry wardrobe with pieces from J. Crew.
“The things we went through over the last couple of years definitely have an impact on what I am doing,” Prentice, 45, said in an interview. “I tend to be less frivolous now.”
Yes. That is her idea of being frugal.
The whole article is awesome, IMO.
Betty Cracker
@PeakVT: Agreed. The same sort of hyper-privileged, connected people cover foreign capitals much more competently. Washington DC should be covered as if it were a foreign capital. Because in a very real sense, it is.
c u n d gulag
‘Cry, The Beloved DC Village…’
Corner Stone
@beltane: “Muffie Cabot” is almost like The Onion made up some one to interview for the piece.
I mean, could parody even begin to touch “Muffie Cabot” ?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Corner Stone: A conservative is someone who will settle for a $300 coach bag as long as the person in the next condo over has to buy from T.J. Maxx.
beltane
Now it’s revealed that the IRS also targeted liberal groups http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-15/irs-sent-same-letter-to-democrats-that-fed-tea-party-row.html. This is really about the GOP money boys intimidating the government from scrutinizing their Unlimited Corporate Cash.
The media’s role in all this is to hold the country down so the GOP can assault it. Same as always.
Violet
Well, my comment just vanished into thin air. No idea why.
cvstoner
D.C. has an exceptionally high concentration of narcissists. Its all about stroking their infinite egos and their tiny little fee fees.
Tone In DC
@Violet:
Of course Muffie. Her best buds are Tipper and Cokie.
Brian R.
@cvstoner:
You misspelled “pee pees” there.
Tone In DC
@mai naem:
Nah. Choate and Exeter.
cvstoner
@Corner Stone: These are the same people who “rent” disabled folks so they can get head of line privileges at Disney World. Absolutely no shame.
Violet
Another gem:
Yes, yes. The delicate press corps can’t handle being lied to. Of course they can lie to us as much as they want. No consequences.
cvstoner
@beltane: Being that this “little village” is populated exclusively by idiots it’s no wonder they’re demoralized…
They might be idiots, but they’re highly educated and well connected idiots ;-)
Cacti
Personally, I love how the Villagers have retconned the Clinton years, and now pretend to remember him fondly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@beltane: I heard Michael Isikoff asking Very Seriously how these mid-level bureaucrats could have been drawn to use words like “Tea Party” and “Patriot” without some political encouragement. In 2010, on TeeVee, the Tea Party was going to take over the country! Sarah Palin’s speech to six hundred Cracker Barrel regulars on Medicare Scooters was treated like a new Constitutional Convention
catclub
@cvstoner: Well, at least well connected and expensively educated idiots. In order to be highly, it has to take.
Omnes Omnibus
@Violet: Muffie is good, but Cabot is better.
SteveinSC
There, fixed. Muffie, I am clutching at my pearls (yeh, those pearls) as I write this.
And by the way Fuck ron four(nicate)ier and the Associated preSS (formerly Bush’s Bodyguard of Lies) out of whose slime pool this transparent Democrat-hating hatchet man crawled.
beltane
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And don’t forget Glenn Beck’s well-attended scooterfest on the Mall. The media subjected us to All Tea Party All the Time and then they express shock that mid-level bureaucrats, who don’t attend any of the A-list cocktail parties, were aware of the Tea Party. The Villagers are stupid people who think the rest of the world are the real idiots.
CASLondon
More importantly, these newsmax ads have alerted me to the fact that investors have made 600% returns buying and selling gold ON THE SAME DAY
What is it about the Grifters and gold? Guns, Gold, and Gays – more wingnut amygdala stimulation under G words than any other letter.
Beatrice
@beltane: I’ve been expecting this. To me this smelled like ACORN and Sherrod. Why we are all so eager to jump into their witch hunts is beyond me. The damage will be done and it won’t matter that in the end there weren’t any actual witches.
eldorado
alternate thread title – swallow you down
Suffern ACE
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: LOL. Yes, but IRS employees shouldn’t read the papers or watch TV. Proper employees do things to purposely become bureaucrats, out-of-synch with the wider society. I heard tell that most employees collect orchids for that very reason.
SteveinSC
@Omnes Omnibus: I though it was where the cabots speak only to lowells and the lowells speak only to god?
Omnes Omnibus
If one is a Harper’s subscriber, this article is quite good. If not, you can’t get it. Sorry.
beltane
@Beatrice: Many liberals have a pathological need to appear fair and even-handed even when their instincts tell them to be suspicious.The right exploits this tendency very effectively, but a lot of the blame should go to people like Jon Stewart who give these ratfuckers the benefit of the doubt every single time.
Scott S.
I still enjoy very happy fantasies of rounding up the Villager press corps and forcing them to fight gladiatorial contests against killer robots.
eric
@Omnes Omnibus: that is the one i referenced yesterday. the best. the book of essays is worth tracking down
Hill Dweller
I wonder if Fournier gave his quote to Politico before or after Jonathan Karl’s completely fabricated take on Ben Rhode’s email was exposed.
Omnes Omnibus
@SteveinSC: There is also a version with Lodges rather than Lowells.
Corner Stone
@Beatrice:
Well, that’s the thing that has me scratching my nether regions and saying, “Hmmmm” to myself in empty rooms.
This WH is not populated with stupid people. They’ve made choices/decisions I certainly disagreed with and could not see the upside to, but I would never once accuse any person there of being stupid. Some of the decisions that were made? Yes, I would definitely say they didn’t seem to be too awesome, IMO.
So it bugs the absolute snot out of me that in over 5 years now this WH does not seem to be able to anticipate clear moves by their opponents, and even more baffling, has yet to figure out how to play any semblance of “crisis” management.
Chris
@beltane:
The funniest thing of all is that we’re expected to believe that the Royal Court of Washington, of all people, are qualified to lecture the rest of us on traditional values and the importance of not cheating. OF ALL PEOPLE.
cleek
FYI, i’m fixing the pie filter.
not ready yet.
eric
@beltane: it is not benefit of the doubt, it is business. He MUST attack liberals / democrats whenever he can because he is so relentless on the idiots in the GOP. This gives him the illusion of objectivity. It is an act.
Brian R.
Reading that, I can only see Helen Lovejoy from the Simpsons shrieking over and over “Won’t somebody think of the children?!?!?!”
Valdivia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I heard this too on CNN in somber tones by some talking head saying that all the way to the top (Obama of course) there was a culture of persecution of the Tea Party. Do these people not know that the Tea Party (it’s in the name!) were applying to be classified as social welfare groups yet they were out there running political candidates. How were they not supposed to investigate? They bungled it but it was the right thing to do. This is the thread they are using to connect Obama to this.
The other one (via Greg Sargent in his morning roundup) is that the IRS counsel told someone in the WH before and they are going to investigate that, ie try to link it to Obama this way.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brian R.: Sally Quinn is far more whorish* (in a gold digging way) than Helen Lovejoy.
*I was going to say sluttier, but that just seemed unfair to slutty people, most of whom I tend to like. I’ll admit that most prostitutes probably have higher moral character than Ms Quinn, but I had to use some word, didn’t I?
catclub
@Corner Stone: I have also read the various letters that Democratic congressmen were writing to the IRS asking them to scrutinize these groups. I am certain that they were not secret then, and even if Darrell Issa disagreed with them, he knew about them – two years ago.
piratedan
@Corner Stone: i’m not so sure that isn’t the case it’s just in all of the faux hysteria no one is listening to anything that is being said, because something something false narratives Benghazi! Look at the ACA, the majority of Americans STILL don’t know what’s in it… is it because the Government doesn’t have it spelled out on the government websites or is it because the media can’t be bothered to inform the general public or buries it in a morass of opinions differ?
PeakVT
@cleek: Thanks.
The Moar You Know
Lest we forget.
There’s a lot of truth telling in that piece, but it’s not the truth the author intended to convey.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
Presidentin is hard. I don’t think one can make this blanket statement in light of the various and many times they’ve been overly cautious in an effort to stymie the right wing outrage machine.
Jockey Full of Malbec
@SteveinSC:
“Oh, but who will rid us of this troublesome
priestPresident?”(The long knives are metaphorical these days, of course).
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead:
And to what end?
pseudonymous in nc
London journalism has a lot of faults, and the tabloids in particular have grubby relationships with the pols, but they never get up their own arses like this.
London’s political reporters live in a city where, frankly, there are much better things to do than hang out with other journalists or politicians all the time. And because of that, they don’t have po-faced outrage over made-up scandal.
pseudonymous in nc
@piratedan:
Because informing the general public means informing themselves, and that’s booooooring.
Corner Stone
@piratedan:
Well, if I knew this was clearly going to happen then I can only imagine very smart back scenes operators in the WH/political wing had to know it too. So that leaves me with a few possible outcomes:
a)they knew it and did their damndest to counter it but failed or at least didn’t succeed
b)they knew it but had little or no idea how to counter
c)they thought something like this may happen but were caught off guard by the scope and fury of it
d)they thought the sheer goodness and decency of what they were attempting stood on its own two feet and was clearly recognizable
Cacti
@Beatrice:
To me this smelled like ACORN and Sherrod. Why we are all so eager to jump into their witch hunts is beyond me. The damage will be done and it won’t matter that in the end there weren’t any actual witches
People on the left have a sense of fair play that right wing ratfuckers absolutely count on when fabricating something that seems completely outrageous.
It’s past time for the left to stop taking any accusation from the GOP at face value, or assume that they’re acting in good faith. They’re not.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
What happened to Fast & Furious?
Frankensteinbeck
@Corner Stone:
To the end that the public now believes that Obama is the only adult in the room and the Republicans are WATB. The Village doesn’t see it that way, but the Village does not and never has represented the opinions of the country at large. Obama’s approach may seem milktoast, but it has worked everywhere outside of the morning bobblehead shows.
kd bart
TEXAS HAS A WHOREHOUSE IN IT!!!!!!!
Eric U.
@Just Some Fuckhead: fast and furious will be back, I have no doubt. Watergate was dismissed as a non-event by republican congressmen before it came back. This is just what they do
Omnes Omnibus
@Eric U.: Isn’t a new F&F movie coming out this summer?
danimal
I re-read the article; it never fails to infuriate me. It ages well as a rage-inducer. Especially since W came in and nuked protocol without anything near the scorn that Clinton received. 9/11 gave the Beltway poor bladder control, and W took full advantage. The press is just now starting to realize that executive overreach is problematic (funny how that happens when a Dem is in charge).
The little Obama scandal boomlet will look mostly silly in a few weeks or months, while the real scandals, such as nullification of laws through filibustering nominees, go on virtually without mention.
rdldot
@Corner Stone: The president shouldn’t have to defend himself. That’s what political operatives are for. Whenever Bush was in trouble, there were mountains of his people in Congress and outside of it that were on TV that day, defending Bush and attacking the people who were criticizing him. For whatever reason, Democrats aren’t doing this for Obama, and they didn’t do it for Clinton, either.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It went on to become a very successful franchise with the side effect of making people actually believe that Dom Toretto could stand in against The Rock.
Some hot babes too, if I’m allowed to say such things in this New Era of Civility ™ .
Tom Q
@Cacti: There was a line back in the 50s or so, that said A liberal is someone so open-minded he won’t take his own side in an argument. I thought of that last night, when I watched the opening (that’s as far as I got) of both Chris Hayes & Rachel. They were attempting thoughtful, well, how bad might this be? approaches to the AP subpoena thing. I was screaming at them, Don’t you understand? — the other guys are coming at you with bayonets, with the press cheerleading. Fuck your little “well, it COULD be illegal” wankfest.
I, too, immediately thought of the Sally Quinn manifesto when I saw the Politico piece today. The Washington establishment, despite everything that’s invalidated their world view since 1998 (Bush’s abject failure, Obama’s two elections, Clinton’s status as world hero) remain stuck in that same “Democrats are to be taken down” mode. That opposition redounded to Clinton’s credit in the end, and now — with the country considerably more Dem-leaning, demographically, than it was 15 years ago — I believe it will work to Obama’s advantage, as well.
Honestly, the Politico piece today was, by any journalistic standard, a disgrace. That so many in Washington won’t see it that way tells us how far in the weeds they are.
rdldot
@danimal: 9/11 didn’t have anything to do with it. Bush was a Washington insider, part of the village. It’s a tribal thing, as the artical made very clear, even though that wasn’t the point of the article.
hildebrand
@piratedan: Definitely more the latter than the former. Finding out what is in the ACA was never difficult, but the Republicans wanted to paint it all as secretive, scary, nefarious, and all other assorted whatnot – and that sells newspapers, not the fairly boring, pedantic exposition of how the new system works, and what it entails.
Did the press ever slap down the Death Panel stuff? Nope, not really, even though they clearly knew it was utter nonsense. Hell, the election last fall was a case study in the press willingly passing along blatant falsehoods about the economic impact of the ACA. Tough for the administration to get out solid information when the press is desiring only that the ‘controversy’ lives to see another day.
RinaX
This is one of the things I really remember from this era. It seems everyday that President Clinton was being trashed left and right, and there was no one there countering it. This “messaging” problem that people seem determined to pin on President Obama is an ongoing problem of the Democratic party in general. You have bright spots here and there, but outside of the 2012 election (more or less) I have yet to see Dems as a whole unite consistently to counteract this stuff. After presidential elections it’s everyone for themselves and their own pet peeves or causes. For all the talk about how the Republicans are in disarray, they’re still smart enough to keep doing their dirt at the state and local level, which supports the damage that the national level Republicans want to do.
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: Well glory be that she has to be less frivilous now!! Isn’t it nice to know that the 2% have to live like the rest of us underlings?
bemused
@Corner Stone:
No mention if they are donating less to food shelves, shelters or other charities to the truly needy. snark. I doubt they are even aware of these groups of people.
Patricia Kayden
@beltane: Hope Eric Holder mentions this today during his crucifixion before Congress.
Patricia Kayden
@rdldot: I don’t understand why there aren’t loads of Dems defending the Administration either. Yet you have the other side on tv all the time running their mouths.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: I call it the Hierarchy of Approval: Democrats want the approval the Broders and the Quinns and the Russerts, who want the approval of Republicans of all stripes. Tim Russert used to brag about being Rush Limbaugh’s favorite journalist, and neither he nor as far as I can tell any of his peers thought it troubling, or even a bit odd, when during the Scooter Libby trial, it was revealed that Cheney and his people thought Russert was a friendly interview.
Villago Delenda Est
This is why my nym is what it is.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Villago Delenda Est
@Patricia Kayden:
Because anyone who defends the President, even in the most mild way imagniable, does not advance the predetermined storyline of the vermin of the Village.
So you’ll never see them on your teebee. Peter DeFazio only gets air time if he’s critical of the administration in some way. Otherwise, he’s a non-entity.
Lordwhordin
@Scott S.: Revive the Duck Pitt!
SteveinSC
@Patricia Kayden: I am about to tear my hair out over these manufactured “scandals.” The Benghazi thing was DOA, but the gop and their sycophants in the press are more than happy to try to resurrect this rotting dead horse.
Lawrence O’Donnell deconstructed the IRS red-herring as a direct fall-out from the Citizens United decision and the word jugging instituted under Eisenhower, changing the language for 501 4(c) social welfare from Exclusively to Primarily social. The poor dicks at IRS were having to sift through a couple thousand new organizations petitioning for 501 c(4) status, coming from, Duh, tea-party and tea-party patriot groups.
The only “scandal” is Obama and Holder not telling the fucking retard gop to go fuck themselves.
Corner Stone
@bemused: Aware of who?
shortstop
Apart from all the other, more obvious reasons this column was ill-advised: Sally Quinn, the third Mrs. Bradlee, was sleeping with her now-husband while he was still married to his second wife — a fact that everyone in Washington knows and that made her particularly badly suited for publicly decrying someone else’s sexually “unacceptable behavior.”
birnspbesq
Every day is a good day for a Flying Burrito Brothers reference. There is, of course, another line from “Sin City” that is even more apropos.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
It takes a helping of un-self-awareness that would choke a hippopotamus to write what Quinn wrote and not have the shame and good taste to trash it rather than send it in to the editor.
McJulie
@Tom Q:
I think most liberals actually want to BE fair-minded and open to the idea that they could be wrong about something, there might be facts they haven’t considered or outcomes that are counter-intuitive, etc. But for media figures and politicians, this often manifests as a desire to BE SEEN as fair-minded.
The political right exploits this like crazy. Because of course, conservatives don’t care if anybody sees them as fair-minded. You don’t have to be fair-minded when you’re RIGHT, do you?
This is why the “liberal media” meme has been so insidious. Most reporters etc. actually ARE pretty liberal personally, but they also believe they have a duty to be neutral and fair-minded, which again — perhaps in the interest of pleasing the imagined audience — works out to the APPEARANCE of fair-mindedness.
So what happens when you try to APPEAR fair minded to “two sides” where at least one of those sides is functionally deranged? A coddled right, an excoriated left, and a middle-left (where most politicians with D after their names reside) hammered constantly in the name of being “hard hitting.”
Bonnie
Why? Why should we re-read that every year? Don’t get it.
Gretchen
My favorite part: jJacqueline Kennedy’ssocial secretary is shocked, shocked at the decline in morals since her days in the White House.
Calouste
@pseudonymous in nc:
And of course all the major news orgs are based in London as well, so the political journos run into their colleagues on a regular basis as well. So while in the Village you might be the coolest kid in the press corps if you get invited to John McCain’s BBQ, in London getting invited to George Osborne’s dinner as a political journo kind of pales compared to your colleague from the showbiz pages getting invited to a Mick Jagger party.
Maude
@Gretchen:
She forgot Warren Harding, Teapot Dome.
DougJ
@birnspbesq:
That one always sounds too much like 9/11 to me.
burnspbesq
@DougJ:
It’s possible that we’re not thinking of the same line, but how so?
lojasmo
@Corner Stone:
You’re welcome to say whatever you want. It simply makes you look like an ass…just like most of the other shit you say here.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.