Salon | Media Circus: The (not so) mighty Quinn


- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K Does the Economist kick other weekly newsmagazines' butts? Weigh in, in the Media area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Hollywoodland By Catherine Seipp And the loser is ... (03/06/98) A bad week for the First Amendment By Eric Alterman Can a reporter write a book about a subject he covers? (03/05/98) Under the Covers By James Poniewozik Money magazines, reflecting our schizoid attitudes toward loot, wobble between safe 'n' sober advice and get-rich-quick fantasies (03/04/98) Memoirs of a shy pornographer By Molly Weatherfield A pornographer is taken aback when a reader takes her fantasies seriously (03/03/98) How to succeed in everything by dropping out of Harvard By Shoshana Berger Matt Damon is the latest in the long line of Crimson quitters to make it big (03/02/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE MEDIA CIRCUS ARCHIVES		THE(NOT SO) MIGHTY QUINN \| PAGE 2 OF 2_ Quinn peaked as a party reporter at the Post, writing bitchy stories about the Washington elite. She is best remembered, however, for reporting that President Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, walked into a room with his zipper open on purpose. It never happened, and Sally ate crow. Having chronicled real parties, Quinn tried writing a pair of novels about parties, one in 1987 and another in 1993. They didn't sell well, and Christopher Buckley, reviewing one for Vanity Fair, called them "cliterature." Quinn was so angry she refused to speak with Tina Brown, who was the magazine's editor at the time. All of this reporting and writing prepared Quinn for her true calling: being a hostess and party girl. "She would go to the opening of an envelope," says one socialite. She positioned herself as the Perle Mesta of the 1990s. She reveled in inviting the usual suspects in the political and media world to her Georgetown manse, then leaking gossip from the parties to reporters at the Post. It was a cozy relationship that depended on Quinn's ability to reel in big-name guests, especially the biggest of all, the first couple -- which brings us to the root of Sally's beef with Hillary. According to society sources, Sally invited Hillary to a luncheon when the Clintons came to town in 1993. Sally stocked her guest list with her best buddies and prepared to usher the first lady into the capital's social whirl. Apparently, Hillary didn't accept. Miffed, Sally wrote a catty piece in the Post about Mrs. Clinton. Hillary made sure that Quinn rarely made it into the White House dinners or social events. In return, Sally started talking trash about Hillary to her buddies, and her animus became a staple of the social scene. "There's just something about her that pisses people off," Quinn is quoted as saying in a New Yorker article about Hillary. Quinn's antipathy to Hillary became the subject of a New York Observer piece in 1996 that turned the spotlight on Sally, now 56. "No longer a journalistic star, Ms. Quinn seems restless and unsatisfied," wrote Mary Jacoby, "despite her wealth and prominence and her Georgetown mansion with swimming pool and tennis court, not to mention her house in the Hamptons." Wondering about the roots of Quinn's spat with Mrs. Clinton, a younger and more powerful woman, Jacoby wondered if Quinn was "frightened" that her good looks were fading and "bitter because she's no longer on center stage." In the introduction to her book on how to throw a party -- which boils down to having plenty of booze -- Quinn admits that she's no longer a journalist. "You can call me a hostess anytime," she writes. So why is she getting on TV talk shows to pass judgment on the president and first lady? The answer takes us back to partying. Quinn has invited most of the producers and anchors to her place for dinner. Take her connection to "Meet the Press" anchor Tim Russert. When Jacoby insinuated Quinn was a witch in the Observer, Russert's wife, Maureen Orth, jumped to her defense. "There's a very incestuous relationship between the New York-Washington journalistic elite," says Washington columnist Chuck Conconi, who edited Quinn at the Post. "They take care of each other. It shows." There's also a reason why Sally Quinn is an apologist for independent counsel Kenneth Starr. "In some way," she said on "Meet the Press," "Ken Starr has become to Clinton what the evil empire, what the Soviet Union was to Ronald Reagan." What she doesn't say is that Ben Bradlee is indebted to Starr, then a judge, for ruling that the Post was not guilty of libel in a celebrated case in the 1980s. In her self-appointed role as the voice of the capital city's permanent establishment, Quinn is already celebrating the passing of the poor white trash president and his ingrate wife. Presidents come and go, Quinn believes, but the Washington elite lives on. And on and on and on. SALON \| March 9, 1998 Harry Jaffe is a national editor at Washingtonian magazine and co-author of "Dream City: Race, Power and the Decline of Washington, D.C."