Unbelievable. Self-appointed cocktail party-hostess expert Sally Quinn managed to schedule her son’s wedding in DC on the same day as her husband’s granddaughter’s wedding in California. Then she used the Washington Post’s Style Section to defend herself and tell us it doesn’t matter because (essentially) the two sides of the family can’t stand each other and she and Ben Sr. were never going to California for that lousy granddaughter’s wedding anyway. Oh, and she takes all the blame for the irrelevant scheduling conflict except that the real fault lies with her husband who failed to follow her instructions to put the first wedding on the calendar. What happened? Well, aside from everyone hating each other and her stupid husband’s oversight, her son’s Georgetown yoga instructor fiancée got knocked up and they wanted to move up the wedding for appearances sake (which reminds me about the whole ineffectiveness of that approach when mother publishes the plan in the Washington Post).
All of this led to much derision.
Former Post reporter Tim Page described Quinn’s column in the comments section on the Post’s website as “the worst piece ever printed in Style,” while inside the Post, one staffer summed up what the newsroom consensus of the piece: “total joke.”
I don’t know about that. For me, the Washington Post’s demise wouldn’t be complete without it deciding to publish the most sordid and banal details of Ben Bradlee’s stupid life.