Parents were more family-centric and wanted to spend evenings with their children. A lot of would-be hostesses couldn’t afford the staffs that old Washington used to have. In it, I listed some of the reasons her numbers and stature were waning: Women were getting jobs and didn’t have time to entertain. In 1987, I wrote a piece about the demise of the Washington hostess. Many in his administration took their cues from the White House.įeminism and other sociological changes were also undermining the A-list. Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress, once was quoted as saying that President Barack Obama didn’t like people. The First Couple was famous for not wanting to make new friends or go out in Washington except to see those already close to them. Things slowed considerably during the Obama years. Bush administration was the last time it really thrived. Trump and covid may have finished off what was once the traditional Washington A-list, but it was already in trouble long before January 2017. (Chris Greenberg/White House Photo Office) Bush at the annual Gridiron Dinner in 2008. And despite - or perhaps because of - my decades immersed in the social life of this city, I won’t be unhappy to see it radically transformed. Now, 14 months later, even as the city begins to reopen, I am convinced that the social lives of Washington players will never go back to what they were before the double blow of Trump and covid. Nobody went anywhere, and if they did, they were masked and furtive. Within days people were holed up in their houses or apartments. In the beginning of March 2020, our world shut down. It was not very merry.Īnd then the pandemic hit. The conversations were Trump, Trump, Trump. But people didn’t have their hearts in it. The trees were up, the wreaths were on the doors, the decorations were on the streets, the Hanukkah candles were lit, the Christmas carols were on the radio. Everyone was exhausted - mentally, physically and emotionally. The winter holidays in 2019 were a round of obligatory parties, but subdued, desultory, dispirited by Washington standards. There were two camps and hardly any intermingling. The president, his wife and those who work closely with them in any administration normally set the social tone.
People had their own gatherings and carried on as if there were no president. establishment simply viewed the Trump people as an occupying army, and from 2017 through early 2020, the Washington social scene as we had known it dried up. After all, how do you give etiquette advice to someone who has bragged about grabbing women’s private parts who has mocked a disabled reporter who has called journalists “scum,” “phony” and “the lowest form of humanity” who has falsely claimed that his predecessor was not born in America who has demeaned a war hero by saying he preferred people who were not captured who had insulting names for his Republican primary opponents and called his female opponent in the general election “a nasty woman”? The piece didn’t work. It wasn’t intentional, but the story turned into a satire, more suited for the Onion.
#Life of josutty wedding scene how to
In that spirit, every four or eight years, I would write a piece for The Washington Post with advice to the incoming administration about how to get along. social scene - which connected the most powerful people in any given administration with political donors, philanthropists, lawyers, lobbyists and journalists, all Washington fixtures - had a way of surviving, no matter the politics of the president.
However, throughout the years, the Washington Establishment always welcomed incoming GOP administrations. Bush won 9 percent Ronald Reagan never won more than 14 percent. Trump won 5 percent of the vote here in 2020 in both of his presidential elections, George W. Washington is, and has been, a Democratic town. The guests ultimately calmed down, but there were some who would have liked Franco to play a recording of “As Time Goes By.” Afterward, some cynics referred to Cafe Milano as “Rick’s Cafe.” Finally it seemed as if the diners - a typical Washington power crowd, which is to say a left-leaning one - would arise en masse and start singing “La Marseillaise” as had happened at the restaurant in “Casablanca” run by Humphrey Bogart’s character, Rick. One by one they were seated, and the agitated buzz in the room became louder. Apparently word had gotten out that it was the place to see and be seen. One night in 2017, soon after Donald Trump was inaugurated, several top administration officials showed up at Cafe Milano, a popular Washington hangout run by Franco Nuschese for the past three decades.
0 kommentar(er)
