Seriously, This is What is Wrong with America

Ben Bradley's wife, otherwise known as Sally Quinn, is a fixture in Washington, and Jamison Foser has a good rundown on just what exactly she is:

You cannot caricature Sally Quinn. Don't even try. It simply can't be done. No matter how hard you try to exaggerate her preening self-regard and utter frivolity, she comes right along and shows herself to be worse than you could possibly imagine.

Quinn -- who gained fame when The Washington Post was forced to retract her false claim that Jimmy Carter's national security adviser unzipped his fly during an interview -- makes the extraordinary claim in her January 26 column that Carter lost his re-election campaign due to his failure to attend Washington dinner parties. Not only that -- according to Quinn, Ted Kennedy ran against Carter because of it:…

She is a failed newspaper reporter (see above), a failed TV reporter, I saw her on the CBS Morning News in the 1970s, and a failed novelist, and is now a serial party girl and hostess.

As was noted some years back in Salon Magazine, "She would go to the opening of an envelope."

Basically, she married into Washington, DC royalty, in the person of former Post Editor-in-Chief Ben Bradlee, and then did her best to become the queen bee of the Washington social circle.

So, what does this mean? It means that when she writes about why things happen in Washington, DC, it's because they don't kiss the ass of the party crowd:

• Carter lost his bid for reelection, and got a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy, because he and Rosalynn didn't go to the the Washington parties.
• Watergate took down Nixon because he didn't go to the the Washington parties, so he had no support from people like Sally Quinn.
• The Republicans attempted coup masquerading as an impeachment investigation against Bill Clinton because he and Hillary didn't go to the the Washington parties.
• George W. Bush was bad, because, "The Bushes almost never went out and the president was in bed by 9:30, even when they entertained, which was rare," so they did not go to the the Washington parties.
• That Barack Obama is icky, because he's making people work so hard that they do not have time to go to the the Washington parties.

Beginning to see a pattern?

I am beginning to pine for Madame la Guillotine.