Sally Quinn - Hideous Human Being or Most Hideous Human Being

I read this column by Sally Quinn in utter disbelief.  This old, irrelevant, deluded fool thinks that she and the other Georgetown socialites hold the key to helping create a successful presidential administration.  The arrogance and insularity are pretty remarkable even by Village standards.

What's amazing to me is that Sally Quinn's main claim to fame and her road to professional advancement was that she fucked Ben Bradlee while he was married to someone else.  (In a wonderful twist, she writes the Post's "On Faith" blog.) You would think someone with that on her resume would be a bit more circumspect, but she was a particularly vicious critic of the Clintons.  

Ah well, as Winston Churchill should have said, some are born to greatness, others have it thrust into them.*

*Line actually stolen from a National Lampoon piece about Margaret Trudeau from many years ago and then mingled in my mind with the equally wonderful "Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill" by Michael O'Donoghue -- representative line -- "eat it raw, fuzznuts!"  

Comments

[oddjob]

AHEM....................

[low-tech cyclist]

Did you see the Onion headline from last September that said, "Nadir Of Western Civilization To Be Reached This Friday At 3:32 P.M."?

I think we can safely say, "Nadir of Washington Post reached this Wednesday at 9:34 a.m.", that being the date stamp on Quinn's piece. It's really hard to see them sucking worse than that. Because it's 11 years since Quinn's original "Village" editorial, and she hasn't changed one iota.

It's hard to comprehensively sum up the amazing quantity of stupid in this one piece.

The big thing is that apparently not one scintilla of all the criticism and ridicule directed at the mindset evidenced by Quinn and her fellow Villagers in the earlier piece has penetrated the Village's inner circle, nor has Quinn thought better of those attitudes on her own.

And her paragraph about Bush is quietly telling, not for what she says:

By the time George W. Bush arrived, despite the bitterness about the way the 2000 election had turned out, Washington social life was ready for renewal but found none. The Bushes almost never went out and the president was in bed by 9:30, even when they entertained, which was rare.

but rather for what she left unsaid - that the Washington establishment rallied around the boy king, despite his Administration's failure to socialize with the Villagers, and stayed firmly by his side through revelations of wrongdoing - war, torture, wiretapping, politically motivated prosecutions - that make Watergate look like a Sunday school picnic.

After that, it would be stupid of Quinn to argue for the importance of cozying up to the Villagers, even if they held the keys to solving all of our problems.

And there's her total blindness to the reality that this nation faces damnable problems right now, which this Administration, to its credit, is at least trying to wrestle with. The idea that the patriotic thing would be to get behind its efforts to solve those problems, or at least intelligently critique them, rather than simply create an extra set of hoops for the White House to jump through while it faces down our multiple crises, clearly hasn't crossed her mind.

But she put the funniest part right up there in the lede:

Think of the permanent Washington establishment as the natives, the Na'vi. If you've seen the movie ["Avatar"], you know that the Earth people invade Pandora and try to take over, hoping to throw out the natives and take over their lush virgin forests, valuable minerals and sacred lands.

Yep, that's exactly what the Washington establishment reminds me of: peaceful aboriginals who revere their lands and forests, and only wish to be left alone to live in peace and harmony.

[oddjob]

Yep, that's exactly what the Washington establishment reminds me of: peaceful aboriginals who revere their lands and forests, and only wish to be left alone to live in peace and harmony.

Well, if the Na'vi are a class of people so full of themselves that they can't imagine why everyone else wouldn't want to be them, I guess you could make the case.

[Sir Charles]

Suddenly I hate those big tall blue fuckers.

[Sir Charles]

Oh God, l-t c -- I just threw up in my mouth. I hadn't read that one in a long, long time -- but not long enough.

[Mandos]

Personally, I thought the last line was the most chokeworthy:

It would be inspiring to see a new administration understand the simple secret of how to belong to the community. Then, they would never have to hear, as the heroine of Avatar, Neytiri, says to the would-be hero, Jake Sully: "You will never be one of the people."

Sally Quinn, you will never be one of the people...

[kathy a.]

my comment got lost. anyway, i clicked the link, got distracted, and then wondered why i was looking at a style page article comparing the entertaining styles of various presidential administrations. not entertaining as in who's funny, but the social kind, as in who sets fashion trends, who holds good parties, and who goes to bed at 9:30.

why does this matter at all? really, it is high school gossip being sold as important because of some perceived "historical" perspective. well, and the presidential name-dropping. wapo's editorial board has some significant lapses of judgment.

[MR Bill]

Guys. I've been a bit overwhelmed with work and life (my mom had a back operation with great results, just needs a lot of care at 80), but this is one that really pissed me off. I read the Quinn column and was appalled at the total lack of self awareness, the tone deafness.
There is, sadly, a layer of truth to this. DC has a permanent class of Mandarins, permanent residents who have some real power. And while there are only a few hundred 'Villagers', those people sit on top of a social structure of tens of thousands, with the ability to make or break individuals lower in the hierarchy. Its been shown to be 'republican' in the sense that the 'res publica' ('the public thing')has, for the villagers, become "cosa nostra" ('our thing').
I fear if there were term limits, it would be worse.

I'm fighting the ol' black dog of depression again, and trying to stay off pharmaceuticals or too much alcohol, and work helps but I've been reading less news (the Health bill makes me feel hopeless and helpless, and I can call Nathan Deal, and Saxby Chambless and Johnny Issacson to no avail)and trying to start some new art pieces. Here's a link to the flikr page, I've recovered some slides from some galleries that have represented me.
A friend promises to help set up a web page of it..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20940335@N03/

[Sir Charles]

MR Bill,

It's good to hear from you and I hope things get better soon.

The funny thing is that I've actually lived in DC now for 27 years and am not completely removed from people with power -- I have friends who are or have been chairman of various federal commissions, who have been high level Senate and House staffers, fairly big time journalists, sub-cabinet officers in confirmable slots, etc. -- but the world that Sally Quinn dwells in is utterly foreign to me. And I think for younger people (like the President oddly enough) these dowagers and mandarins of yesteryear are like some freak show, completely out of touch with the way that we live now. I actually don't think that they have much power or influence at this point. The right wing noise machine is a far scarier and more potent phenomenon.

I know it sounds funny coming from me, but try to go light on the alcohol while you're feeling this way.

We'll check out the art -- you'd be probably better off working on that than wasting breath calling your asshole seantors.