A worser sort of trash...
I am going to excerpt massively, because, well because I'd rather that no one followed the link.
Sally Quinn announces the end of power in Washington - The Washington Post
"It was telling that Vanity Fair had bought more tables at the dinner than most of the Washington news organizations.
On the way home (we skipped the after-parties), I suddenly realized that this grotesque event signaled the end of power as we have known it. That dinner —which seemed to have more celebrities, clients and advertisers than journalists and politicians —was the tipping point.
The grotesqueness was being stuck between Ms. Gingrich and Ms. Kardashian at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. Ms. Quinn has helpfully informed us that she was invited to the after-parties (obliquely/ostentatiously [depends on the reader I suppose] displaying her social credentials in passing is a strong point of Ms. Quinn's). She has suggested that she knows power, that the power she knows is the power we know, and she claims that this has passed. We shall see.
The decline of power has been happening for a while. In 1987, I wrote a piece for this magazine called “The Party’s Over.” In it, I chronicled the demise of the Washington hostess. That was 25 years ago, and people were complaining even then that Washington would never be the same.
I like the fact that she "suddenly realized" in 2012 what she had already chronicled in 1987. Frankly, I think that a piece titled "The Party's Over," in which the demise of the Washington hostess is the central narrative, would have been an episode of Murder, She Wrote. I wish it had been.
But power still trumped money in those days. Today, money trumps power. If Katharine Graham, the late publisher of The Washington Post, were having a party today, and politicians or statesmen received a conflicting invitation to a party put together by Sheldon Adelson (Gingrich’s super PAC guy), where do you think people would go? Adelson. No question.
If the late publisher of The Washington Post were having a party today, I suspect the only persons who would choose Adelson's event would be those whose fear of the undead was stronger than their morbid curiosity. While Kardashian and Adelson might not be The Right Sort of People for Ms. Quinn, I would prefer them to anyone so uninterested as to skip the dead hostess' party.
Now, at a party, if you find people staring over your shoulder to see who’s more important in the room, they’re usually looking at someone rich, rather than someone powerful. (Or perhaps they’re staring at themselves in a mirror, as I once observed.)
She could have just observed, rather than noxiously informing us that this is one of her little wits, the pearls that make her such a card in the social circuit. Is this why she is given space in the Post? Because she has made clever little remarks at parties? Has she done anything, at all, ever?
Power in Washington used to be centered on the White House, the Congress, the Cabinet, the diplomatic corps and the journalists. Today, all of those groups depend on money for their very existence. The real power lies with the lobbyists, the money-raisers, the super PACs, the bundlers, the corporations and rich people. The hottest ticket on the planet is not an invitation to the White House but an invitation to the World Economic Forum in Davos....
Well she has appealed to my class prejudice against the wealthy and in favor of the democratically representative. Let's see where she is going with this.
The Obamas have been roundly criticized for not being part of the Washington social scene. The question is, does it matter? Could Obama win or lose the presidency because he has dissed the Washington community? I suspect the answer is no. It doesn’t matter anymore....
Oh for fuck's sake. "Roundly criticized" might be the only part of this paragraph that bears any resemblance to reality, considering its suggestion of the organizing committee of the Washington social scene going round and each criticizing Obama in turn.
“Good luck and good timing are great, but ultimately, a Washington party rises and falls with its power quotient. This has always been the case.”
Ain’t no mo’....
I don't even know what she means by party anymore. Does she mean political party? Dinner party? "Ain't no mo'...." Is this a saying? Did she see this on The Wire?
There you have it. Money is power. The fundraiser has replaced the Washington dinner party....
Could it be that the Obamas, not knowing Washington, think that’s all there is to the social life here? Who wouldn’t want to stay away? On the other hand, he is the president of the United States and, whether he likes it or not, the leader of social as well as political Washington."
As much as I dislike the dominance of the rentiers and the monied, it is certainly better than the dinner party set. The only think less democratic (in that great old-time democracy meaning of the term) than the fundraiser is the dinner party.
This is
The Age of Innocence, without any of Wharton's wit, callous disregard, and self-awareness. While it may have mattered for those who were in its embrace, the passing of this social world is as great a loss as the passing of a kidney stone: sucks to be the one affected, but better for all involved once it's gone.
But let's not pretend for a second that this has really passed away. Rather, Ms. Quinn is showing the contempt of the beta bourgeois for the alpha bourgeois, the disgust of the useless, dreary, and destitute nobility with the social parvenus and climbers. That is, she is showing the least interesting or ennobling manifestation of class envy that is supposedly such an un-American trait: the dreary complaints of an inner-track that they are not the innermost, totally uncoupled with a recognition that there might be tracks even further along the radius.
