And the Avatar metaphor is really forced.

Because aren't the Washington elite more like the guys who invade Pandora, rather than the Na'vi?

Perhaps she just confused blue skin with blue blood.

washingtonpost.com > Arts & Living > Style

... if anyone wants to go there. (Hazmat suits and a thorough full-body soak afterwards in boiling Purell recommended.)

The dreck below picks up after the Carter era. I was going to bold/emphasize the passages that are especially repellant, but if there's anything positive to say about Quinn, it's that she makes that labor unnecessary. (It would be nice too, for a exacting display of Form meeting Content, if everyone reading this had the Crack Babies font.)

Administrations should befriend the locals -- they'll need them in hard times By Sally Quinn, WaPo, Wednesday, January 27, 2010

[...] Since then, Washington has struck out on its own. New administrations have been greeted as warmly as invading armies. The Reagans, at first, tried to engage local Washington, with a dinner for insiders at the exclusive F Street Club, and hosted many state dinners. In the end, though, they drifted toward importing glamorous friends from New York and California, especially in the Iran-contra slog of the second term. The first Bush White House came in with a small coterie of friends and kept to them; no second term (see also, The Carters). The Clintons brought in a whole new crowd, many of them young and arrogant and clique-ish, which created such a competitive social atmosphere that the environment became toxic. In the beginning, advised by bipartisan fixer David Gergen, the Clintons hosted a series of small dinners for the chattering classes; these petered out as the first couple didn't find them useful (or fun). Ironically, President Clinton had given a toast at Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham's welcoming dinner for him shortly after he was elected. He talked about Washington being a place that was obsessed by "who's in and who's out, who's up and who's down." It was as though he were predicting his own tenure: A lot of enemies were made. When the Monica Lewinsky affair turned into a debacle, during his second term, Clinton was impeached partly because of the ill will toward him in the city. After that, the Clintons went underground and very few from the administration were seen out and about.

By the time George W. Bush arrived, despite the bitterness about the way the 2000 election had turned out, Washington social life was ready for renewal but found none. The Bushes almost never went out and the president was in bed by 9:30, even when they entertained, which was rare.

When Obama was elected, people began singing "Happy Days Are Here Again." Expectations were over the top. It would be only hours before we would all be dancing on tables. They were beautiful and glamorous, hip and fun. They were the new Kennedys, and Washington would come alive again. They would set a new social tone. Young people would be out every night, partying, mixing and mingling. Members of Congress, who had been sleeping on sofas in their offices and in group houses because their families lived back in the home districts, would start accepting invitations again instead of working for 18 hours, three days a week, and then going home for four.

It was all a Camelot fantasy. Obama inherited the helm of the Titanic. Many of those he brought in were from past administrations. A lot of his crowd came in from Chicago and stuck together. People are working around the clock, and too exhausted and overextended to go out. The Obamas rarely entertain, except for large events. They are raising two young children and, understandably, prefer to stay home most nights with them, enjoying a family dinner and helping with homework. They have said that going out is such a huge production (sharpshooters, ambulances, decoy limos, motorcades, etc.) that it's almost not worth it. They have hosted only one state dinner. That, unfortunately (aside from the gate-crashers), was used to reward White House staffers instead of being an opportunity to bring in the best and the brightest from around the country.

Consequently, the Obamas and many of their top advisers have not had the opportunity to circulate and meet the natives. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. One top White House adviser was seen at a gala a few months ago and a local scold snapped, "Why isn't he back at the White House saving the country?"

You gotta have friends

So what is the answer?

Making friends is crucial. I'm only being partly facetious when I suggest that there should be some sort of in-house list where members of the administration (any administration!) are designated to go out a certain amount, in exactly the same way they make the rounds on Sunday talk shows.

This includes the president! Even senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said this week that Obama "likes the rigor of having a conversation with someone who's going to push him." She told The Post, "There's really no point in him wasting time with people who simply agree with him all the time because it's not going to refine his position, it's not going to enlighten his position." In other words, he'll certainly accomplish some of that once he gets around town.

Indulge me for a moment on the topic of our cultural bellwether, "Avatar." In the film, the Pandora natives worship the goddess Eywa, who is the spirit that connects them to their planet. If there is such a goddess in Washington, I believe, it is the spirit of community. Those who live here want to welcome new friends. Washingtonians are open and willing to invite newcomers and make them part of their lives. If they can't do that, there is automatically a distance that is created so that if -- no, make that when -- the administration gets into trouble, there is too little sympathy or support.

When an administration begins to express hostility to those in the community, the Na'vi pull out their arrows with the poison tips and begin taking aim. The rougher things get, the more members of the administration need to reach out, not withdraw. Nobody has ever been able to master this yet. Consequently everyone suffers -- needlessly.

It would be inspiring to see a new administration understand the simple secret of how to belong to the community. Then, they would never have to hear, as the heroine of Avatar, Neytiri, says to the would-be hero, Jake Sully: "You will never be one of the people."

I didn't realize until now that Maureen Dowd learned everything she knows from Sally Quin. It's as if all the pieces of the puzzle have come together.

And I don't think we need to look any further to figure out why every White House since Carter has actively ignored her, do you?

(The Original MoDo, by digby, Hullabaloo, 1/28/2010 08:30:00)

It took the jury just 37 minutes Friday to reach the verdict in confessed killer Scott Roeder's (ROH'-durs) trial. It was to be read late Friday morning.

Roeder has said he shot Dr. George Tiller on May 31 to protect unborn children.

His lawyers on Thursday failed to make a case for a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. The judge also refused to allow the jury to consider a second-degree murder conviction.

Do you remember those things that employers used to give, what were they called... oh yeh-- 'raises.'

that was a cute name. When was the last reported siting of one of those? 99?

I've just spent a fruitless hour on the phone with the power company. Doesn't matter that there were two weeks of record lows set in January. Reminds me of the movie Goodfellas.

And the economy is soaring?

This paragraph stands out:

I'm periodically criticized for an "angry" tone in my writing, which I always find mystifying.  I genuinely don't understand why anger should be avoided or even how it could be.  What other reaction is possible when one looks around and sees the government leaders who committed these grave crimes completely unburdened by any accountability and treated as respectable dignitaries, or watches the Tom Friedmans, Jeffrey Goldbergs, Fred Hiatts and other unrepentent leading media propagandists who helped enable it still feted as Serious and honest experts, or beholds the current Cabinet and Senate filled with people who supported it, or observes the Michael O'Hanlons and Les Gelbs and other Foreign Policy Community luminaries who lent trans-partisan credence to it all continue to traipse around still pompously advocating for more wars that never touch their lives?  

All of this underscores the fact that -- despite how much public debate it has received -- we still childishly, and with moral blindness, refuse to come to terms with the true scope of our wrongdoing when it comes to the Iraq  War.

And he backs it up well in the graphs that follow.

If I'm not mistaken, Obama will meet - or has met - with Dems, too, at their own retreat.

I'd like to hope that Obama is beginning to find himself as a leader (but also hoping he doesn't see himself as the New Ronald Reagan with all that could mean for policy), but then I think maybe his performance today is the equivalent of the sternly-worded letter, which, as we know, is usually followed by the inevitable back-down.