What She Left Out

by digby

This week Sally Quinn famously wrote an already notorious column about how all the presidents hav dissed the Village in recent years by refusing to socialize. She even gave George W. Bush a little slap for going to bed at 9:30.

But Bush wasn’t really the president, was he?

The Cheneys have created one of the city’s only salons, a voluntary activity you wouldn’t expect from a man whose idea of heaven is fly-fishing in silence. About every six weeks, the Cheneys invite 16 scholars, artists and authors for dinner. Lynne kicks off the discussion but is aware the group doesn’t need much help, since there are few shrinking violets. “Smart people are naturally funny and clever.” The Cheneys spend some nights at official events, like the Kennedy Center Honors, other nights eating off trays in the den and a surprising number of nights casually out and about. The Cheneys have even dined at the mecca of Georgetown limousine liberals, chez Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn. The Cheneys are the most social of the Bushies, asserts Quinn, which she feels accounts for the relatively friendly press coverage the Vice President gets. “It’s harder to trash someone you’ve had pasta with the night before.”

That’s an article from 2002 about Lynne Cheney, by the way. If you want to revisit just how sycophantic and servile the press was during that period, give it a gander.

And then ask yourself if they’ve learned anything.

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