This Town boring as this town

This Town, New York Timesman Mark Leibovich’s shocking piss-and-tell, chattering class takedown of the chattering class is, in fact, causing a lot of chatter amidst the chattering class. Old DC hand Lois Romano goes full chattering class in this exercise in suppressed hysteria, accusing “Leibo” of undermining the networks of “dinner parties and receptions [where] relationships are created without which the machinery of government would soon stalemate itself,” in the words of Henry “Honest Man” Kissinger.

Of course, one might say that it was at Georgetown dinner parties and receptions where the machinery of government was not stalemated but rather broken to pieces, in the eyes of Henry’s boss, Richard Nixon, but that’s another story. You can read Lois’ complaint and take it for what it’s worth, but I’d rather concentrate on what Leibo wrote, because it’s basically awful. The New York Times has a chunk of it here, retailing the rise and fall and partial rise of Kurt Bardella, a DC Sammy Glick who worked for Rep. Darrell Issa, and the New Republic has another chunk here, dishing on mega-fixer and babe around town Tammy Haddad.*

Bob Woodward has frequently been faulted for reducing major policy issues to gossip. Mark Leibovich reduces gossip to gossip. Both Kurt and Tammy are completely uninteresting people who have no interest in policy or anything else except pushing their careers, and reading about their lives, particularly as pickled in the cutesy, bitchy aspic of Leibovich’s smug, self-congratulatory, god I’m clever prose, is an exercise in self-punishment that I refused to endure. If Mark has anything to say, I couldn’t stick around long enough to find out about it.

Afterwords
I guess Mark’s point is that DC is even worse than ever. Well, he would have to say that, wouldn’t he? Because otherwise he’d have nothing to write about. In any event, the idea that DC is somehow worse than any other city full of self-promoters—worse than New York, where Mark hangs his hat, after all—is laughable. In his bit on Tammy Haddad, Mark mentions an event in the “elegant Jefferson Hotel.” Well, the Jefferson, which soars a full five stories on 16th Street, is a nice place, but compared to the Plaza or the Carlyle, it’s a snack bar. It will be a long time before DC starts giving decadence lessons to the Big Apple, and Mark Leibovich ought to know it.