Bill and I made a quick foray into Gomorrah-on-the-Potomac this weekend. A dear friend of ours was having a Big 6-0 birthday party there. Her spouse organized the party as a surprise, and amazingly it worked. One hundred people in fancy duds were all packed into one of the city’s swankiest private clubs and when the birthday girl arrived we all leapt up saying “Surprise!”
I have this complex sort of love-hate relationship with Washington DC. Mainly, a lot of amazement at the toxic miasma of militarism and arrogance that marks nearly all of what passes for policy discourse there. There’s a critical mass of people who work in the administration, people who work on the Hill, people who work in the (so-called) “think tanks”, and very insidery “press” people… And they all talk to each other and create this massive echo chamber of likeminded people who seem sincerely to be of the belief that what they’re talking about is “the world”, when quite frequently it isn’t at all.
On the other hand, I did live there for 15 years. I got to know hundreds of nice people, and still count many of them as my friends.
One person I’ve known for oh, 20 years, let’s just say someone who used to be a very senior diplomat who spent the past year working in Baghdad’s Green Zone, called out to me at the party last night (with a big smile): “Helena Cobban! The provocateuse!”
“Why d’you say that?” I asked once I could get closer to him.
“Because you tell the truth,” he said.
So that was nice. We talked a bit longer, but the party was pretty crammed and the accoustics terrible.
I keep thinking I should try and spend a little more time in DC to catch up with some of the folks there a bit more, like him. Seven years after leaving the city, I’m maybe just about ready to go back in some way.
But heavens, no: definitely not to become any kind of “insider”.