Ha ha ha, you crazy liberals. You really thought that Barack Obama and his family was like you and yours, didn't you? That he was not actually a member of this shadowy and nebulous "liberal elite." Fools!
Turns out that Obama's first order of "spreading the wealth around" will find him not spreading the wealth at all, but merely transferring some of the wealth to other wealthy people in order to benefit the children of the wealthy.
The Huffington Post today takes a closer look at where Obama's daughters, Malia and Sasha, will be attending school once they move into the White House. Because DC public schools are notoriously shitty, violent hellholes, it's likely that the First Daughters will attend one of the city's ritzy private institutions, most of which cost $20,000 plus per child.
Yes they can! No you can't!
Let's say you worked your whole life, or at least a few months, campaigning and fundraising to get yourself elected to one of those enormous Neoclassical buildings in Washington D.C., where you pass bills and have lunch with lobbyists. As it so happens, if you are one of these people — senators, we think they're called, or congress-persons — you also find yourself in one of two positions: Favoring or hating the economic bailout package. For those of you senators, you've already made your choice: You finally "put partisan politics aside" and voted for the thing yesterday. Now it's up to the House to get this thing done and on President Bush's desk. This was after a dubious bout of wrangling on Monday that left the bill, and supposedly, the economy, in peril. But what if things never had to be like this? What if those who wanted the bailout package to pass had done things a little bit differently and, rather than having to rally support from their political colleagues, they had simply done a better job selling the idea? Some argue it was possible. And part of that solution included, for starters, not calling the thing a "bailout" in the fist place. CONTINUED »
While MTV spends Fashion Week taping the New York The Hills spin-off, there's a little production going on in the nation's capital. As we told you last month, a Washington D.C. version of the show is underway, but not from MTV. PB&J Television — of the estimable prison doc series Girls On The Wall — has on lock "local socialites/hotties/20-somethings Katherine Kennedy, Krista Johnson and Sophie Pyle." Now, a tipster tells us filming is underway, and camera crews can be spotted around Georgetown; Kennedy was taped at the Peacock Café (next to to Café Milano) yesterday. For what it's worth, one TripAdvisor user noted Peacock Café 's "lousy service destroyed our meal." And soon, television!
Oh. Goodie. First came L.A.'s The Hills. Next will come its New York spin-off. And this fall, we'll also be treated to a D.C. version of white girls of privilege. From something called PB&J Television (they produced Sports Illustrated's model reality show) comes Washington's attempt at "unscripted" reality, with an as-yet-untitled show that's set to start filming in September and rushed to air by November. And how do we know it's a sure thing? Well, you never really know, but Lifetime did pick it up and supposedly plans to air it immediately following Project Runway, which it's stealing from Bravo to create quite the perfect lead-in. "Casting hasn't been finalized, according to one source, but the primary characters — local socialites/hotties/20-somethings Katherine Kennedy, Krista Johnson and Sophie Pyle — remain on board. Johnson’s younger sister, Alexa Johnson, will also play a role in the show, most likely, although she and the show are still working out specifics. The Johnson sisters are alumnae of South Carolina’s College of Charleston, Kennedy graduated from Loyola Marymount and Pyle is taking a semester off from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill." Also, they plan on being "more realistic": CONTINUED »
How do you make Washington D.C. appear interesting on television? Well, the answer isn't K Street. But perhaps its in this teaser for possible new series D.C. Prep, which acknowledges that the spawn of persons of power — vice presidents, Fed chairmans, ambassadors — all hang out with each other where alcohol and drugs are nearby. Third-grade Googling doesn't reveal much about this series, so this trailer here might be as far as production has gone. And while we'd be totally juiced about this show making it to air — yes, The CW is a natural fit — there's one suspicious lie they're trying to push: That D.C. types are this attractive. And worth having sex with.
The left-leaning blogger Brian Beutler, the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium, was shot in D.C. yesterday. "Some of the details of the incident are still sketchy. According to [MC project director Tracy] Van Slyke, Beutler was walking with a friend after leaving a bar in Washington's Adams Morgan section when the two were confronted by a man demanding their cell phones near 17th Street and Euclid Street. It's unclear as yet what happened, but the man fired several shots at Beutler. One bullet hit him in the spleen and he was hit twice in the shoulder. A D.C. police official said he wasn't aware of any arrests made in connection with the shooting." Though Beutler is expected to bounce from stable condition to full recovery, this whole thing is sad, because it's quite likely he was not even shot for his political leanings. [TPM]
The American press corps isn't the only group anxious to see President Bush leave office in January — the Brits are twiddling their thumbs just as much. The Guardian's Bill Blanko, who refers to said American press corps as a "bunch of toadies," lays into the current leader of the free world, and his list of complaints is lengthy. Among them: "His sneering performance this week at his press conference with Gordon Brown in the Locarno Room (which lobby correspondents much prefer visiting for Foreign Office drinks parties) confirmed that he obviously loathes us. And after his surly verbal swipes at journalists, in between such horrendous Bushisms as "white-guy Methodists" (imagine the row if a British politician used a phrase like that), the feeling was mutual."
But most of all, what really bags Blanko is a little thing called alcohol — and the fact that the president doesn't drink any. And that the D.C. media doesn't drink enough. CONTINUED »
Washington D.C. political bloggers live together. In a "flop house." And then they watch the cable news networks together. And then blog their reactions. And then link to each other's blog posts. And then finish off the Jim Beam and make sweet, sweet link love to each other.
Unless you’re some weird form of pagan and believe there are only 10 months in a year, The Atlantic Monthly hasn’t been a monthly in some time. So from now on, it’ll just be The Atlantic, thank you very much.
And unless you’re ugly and smart, there’s no point in living in D.C. So The Atlantic has decided to re-move its sales and marketing to New York. Maybe they’ll stick in this city. New York rules.
For a magazine that just moved from Boston to Washington, New York seems like an odd location for The Atlantic’s 150th Anniversary party. But as Andrew Sullivan says, “You can’t have a party unless it’s in New York.”
Fair enough. But that doesn’t explain The Atlantic’s venue choice: a theater in the village. With a full audience, the party was one-part open bar, one-part performance piece. While we drank, we couldn’t help but feel bad for The Atlantic fans in the crowd who had to watch a New York magazine photographer take pictures of Jared Kushner. The New Yorker festival seemed modest by comparison.
It took long enough, but today Congress overrode George Bush’s veto for the first time in his presidency.
On Friday, Bush vetoed a water bill that would provide restoration to the Florida Everglades and communities in the Gulf Coast.
The Senate voted 79 to 14 and the House voted 361 to 54 to go along with the bill despite Bush’s stance.
Damn, Georgie. You just got served.
The Atlantic moved to D.C. two years ago, and Boston still isn't over it.
The relocation was part of a larger initiative to give The Atlantic a broader appeal. The magazine has become less theoretical and literary—no more David Foster Wallace covers or monthly short stories—and more concerned with politics and business.
The result, according to Adam Reilly of the Boston Phoenix, is a magazine with Newsweek-esque covers and enough info-graphs to rival U.S. News & World Report.
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You might think the only thing going in Washington is a lame (duck) President and disgraced Senators. But you’d be wrong!
Yesterday, the House passed the journalist shield law 398 to 21. The law would allow journalists to protect the confidentially of sources in most federal cases. As non-journalists, this law wouldn't really affect us. But we'd still like it to pass for the drama.
In a total departure from their usual stance toward journalists, the White House is against the law and has threatened a veto. It still has to get past the Senate before Bush will get a chance to play his “threat to national security" card.
[AP]
Whenever we leave New York, we’re always shocked by how dumpy the rest of the country looks. Outside of this city, women wear overalls to the movies, men have the same haircut they had as children and no one seems to mind the extra ten pounds they’re carrying around.
Even Washington, despite its young population and relatively urban setting, is ugly compared with New York. But to be fair, twenty somethings down there are fetching coffee for senators, not magazine editors.
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The new White House Press Secretary Dana Perino is sort of like that eager girl from high school math who always asks for extra credit.
She’s just so darn eager. She’s been Press Secretary for one month, which coincided with one the worse stretches of Bush’s tenure, but she says, “to me, it's a wonderful job.”
Her dog even does Republican tricks, like fetching a flip-flop when asked about John Kerry.
Weirdest of all, she seems to have a crush on Tony Snow:
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DC may not be a good looking city and journalists can be an ugly lot, but surely Claire Danes in her awkward phase and Jesse Oxfeld look-a-likes are not the best looking writers there. And yet Catherine Andrews, an editor at The Washingtonian online, and Kriston Capps, an arts writer, won this year's FishbowlDC Hottest Media Types, Off Air Division.
But as the sleuths over at Salon uncovered, the whole thing was a fraud. "Friends" of Capps and Andrews created voting bots to rig the election. Which just goes to show, only ugly people care about looking good online.
Ever slept with an elected government official? Know someone who has? Sure, you could go the Jessica Cutler route, but then odds are you'll be bankrupt in the next couple of years.
So, what then? Well, how's about answering Hustler magazine's open call to arms instead! To collect your $1 million reward, all you need to do is prove you banged a congressman, senator or supreme court justice, and—if your tip checks out—you're in the money.
Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt told the Examiner "that the newspaper ad he took out last week offering a million-dollar bounty for evidence of illicit sexual activity with lawmakers has yielded about 200 tips so far. He said he'll let them continue to trickle in over the next two weeks or so before his team begins to follow up on them."
But, you might wonder, 'is Hustler's pay-per-play operation against the law?'
Because while you may have no moral or ethical objections to sleeping with a married U.S. legislator, you saw The People Vs. Larry Flynt and thought to yourself, 'Hey, that guy's kinda sketchy. Also, he kinda looks like Woody Harrelson.' Plus you're slightly uncomfortable about the prospect of profiting from your promiscuity by selling your adulterous bedtime stories to anyone who goes by the nickname 'The King Of Smut.'
Unless, of course, it's legal—in which case you're totally down.
This morning, Howie Kurtz is pissing off Harvey Levin. While Harvey tries to keep his TMZ.com's Washington D.C. gossip efforts hush hush, there goes Howie, blowing the lid off things. Again. But this time it's not fervor and excitement about the possibility of a Roll Call competitor — it's news that all is not well mixing the Thirty Mile Zone with the Beltway.
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The District of Columbia has always been known for its high intelligence quotient and hopelessly unattractive populace. But has that time come and gone?
"Possibly!" says a thought-provoking article in yesterday's D.C. based Politico, that dares to wonder "maybe we're not so ugly anymore?"
The piece, while inconclusive, nevertheless features a persuasive picture of resident hottie (and Senate staffer) Kate Michael, and provides several interesting theories for the purported increase in overall attractiveness. One hypothesis credits the Democratic takeover of Congress, arguing that Dems are "traditionally more of the allies and pals of the Hollywood set and therefore…pushing the style quotient."
But not everyone's convinced.
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Did you know that John Harris of the Washington Post wrote a book? No? Really? Well, apparently, neither did his co-workers. Or, at least Harris doesn't think they know about it. Hence this letter "from the department of shameless self-promotion" in which he begs his peers to buy The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008." And they say the media isn't biased! Well, at least he's honest.
From: John Harris/news/TWP
To: NEWS - All Newsroom@WashPostMain
Date: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 02:05PM
Subject: from the department of shameless self-promotionI recently wrote a book on presidential campaigns and strategy. "THE WAY TO WIN: Taking the White House in 2008" is focused on the way the political game has changed over the past generation and tries to illuminate the specific principles that people who have thrived at winning this game (including Bill Clinton and Karl Rove) know and how they put those principles to work.
He also encourages his Post colleagues to come hear him speak tonight. And the alluring fact that his underling simply adored the book is his main selling point.
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Editorial Director
