‘This Town’ Needs an Enema (+video)
Photo Credit: Blue Rider PressBy Erick Erickson. Mark Leibovich of the New York Times has written a pretty scathing book about Washington, DC, called This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital. It is a pretty accurate portrayal of the Washington, DC more and more Americans have come to hold in contempt. There exists in Washington a new aristocracy where, for example, a poor boxer from Searchlight, NV, can get elected to the United States Senate, become wealthy enough to live at the Ritz, and see his family profit from K Street.
It is a city where the new aristocrats move and do not want to leave. It is a town in need of an enema. Read more from this story HERE.
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‘This Town’ rattles D.C. social scene
By Luis Romano. Washington is a town that shuns wannabes and impostors to ensure no one as unsavory as the gate-crashing Salahis makes it into the inner sanctum. So, it’s no small irony that a guy who was embraced by the A-list soirees of D.C. ends up toppling the hors d’oeuvres trays.
Indeed, the nation’s capital is in full spasm over Mark Leibovich’s cutting takedown of the city’s cozy culture in his new book, “This Town.” The fear: That it will send a chill through the elite after-hours social circuit — where the real business of this town often gets done between reporters and sources. What has rattled many is that Leibovich did a chunk of his reporting at parties and funerals at which he was considered a guest — or, at least, not a working journalist taking detailed notes…
For his part, Leibovich says that he is “always working as a journalist.” And furthermore, he adds, it’s a real circus out there…
One of his prime targets in the book is Tammy Haddad, a former television producer who has hosted a lot of parties at which Leibovich was a regular. He portrays her as a social-climber and access-peddler, writing, “… perhaps a bit of a cartoon.”
And Leibovich clearly had a front-row seat to observe her. By his own count, he’s attended about 10 of Haddad’s parties over the years, including one or two of her famous annual garden brunches before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. (He was dropped this year after Haddad got wind of what he was writing.) Read more from this story HERE.
