The Village

(Timed promotion 8 am – promoted by ek hornbeck)

In a piece yesterday digby outlines the genesis of ‘The Village’ label (you can call it a frame if you like) as a catch-all for the petulant whiny inbred incestuous elitist idiots who populate the festering swamp (there is a reason the blog is called Swampland) that is the Beltway.

It is rapidly becoming my favorite phrase next to ‘blogtopia’ (thank you skippy) and ‘pre-Whoring’.

Now I didn’t know that we had Sally Quinn to thank for it-

In Washington, That Letdown Feeling

By Sally Quinn, Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, November 2, 1998; Page E01

When Establishment Washingtonians of all persuasions gather to support their own, they are not unlike any other small community in the country.

But this particular community happens to be in the nation’s capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders — the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.

“This is our town,” says Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the first Democrat to forcefully condemn the president’s behavior. “We spend our lives involved in talking about, dealing with, working in government. It has reminded everybody what matters to them. You are embarrassed about what Bill Clinton’s behavior says about the White House, the presidency, the government in general.”

NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell adds a touch of neighborly concern. “We all know people who have been terribly damaged personally by this,” she says. “Young White House aides who have been saddled by legal bills, longtime Clinton friends. . . . There is a small-town quality to the grief that is being felt, an overwhelming sadness at the waste of the nation’s time and attention, at the opportunities lost.”

“We have our own set of village rules,” says David Gergen, editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, who worked for both the Reagan and Clinton White House. “Sex did not violate those rules. The deep and searing violation took place when he not only lied to the country, but co-opted his friends and lied to them. That is one on which people choke.

“We all live together, we have a sense of community, there’s a small-town quality here. We all understand we do certain things, we make certain compromises. But when you have gone over the line, you won’t bring others into it. That is a cardinal rule of the village. You don’t foul the nest.”

Yup.

Just a pack of filthy hippie barbarians storming the village we are, ready to pillage and burn.  Their lamentations music to our ears.  I’ve carried my shield a long time and the axe is sharp enough.

Now I happen to think it’s going to take a long time, but revolutionary change is all around you- the world will be a very different place in 5 years.  What I do know is this- without our effort to change things for the better, they won’t.

Maybe what we do won’t be enough to change things as much as we hope in the direction that we want but the one thing I don’t want to live with is regret.  I regret nothing.  The good.  The bad.  It’s all the same.

5 comments

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  1. Where am I?

    In the Village.

    What do you want?
    Information.
    Whose side are you on?

    That would be telling…. We want information. Information! INFORMATION:.

    You won’t get it.

    By hook or by crook, we will.

    Who are you?

    The new Number 2.

    Who is Number 1?

    You are Number 9.

    I am not a number – I am a free man!

    • pfiore8 on November 29, 2007 at 10:13

    don’t count on it. you know why? i just realized it. i don’t want to change. but i sure want you to change.

    because you are the problem. not me.

    don’t take it personally ek. it’s the universal “you” but the “me”, well that, my friend, is personal.

  2. and steal back its resources.

    Hey it worked for Bushco, and no one seems to raising much of a fuss.

  3. that one president can be pilloried for a sexual misadventure and lying about it and get impeached while the next president can send thousands of his fellow countrymen and women to die and murder hundreds of thousnads of their innocent civilians in revenge for their murder of 3,000 of our innocent civilians (even though they were not the ones who did it in the first place, they just all look alike), and we cannot drum up sufficient support from the Village Elders to impeach him for that heinous crime?.

    There seems to be a certain degree of proportionality there somewhere.  Is it that our puritan heritage still makes us  treat sex by different standards to violence?  I guess that is a rhetorical question.

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