11/28/07

Okay, Digby's Right. Duh!
By: Mark W Adams


I've been resisting the "Village" epithet Digby, Atrios, TRex and The Carpetbagger have adopted to describe the press and beltway insiders that inhabit Washington D.C., preferring instead the idea of Versailles Courtiers dancing along the Potomac.

I've been disabused of this notion. There is little in the people that populate the Nation's Capital that can be confused with the term, "elegant."

Like many a political observer, until I read this, I thought of DC as being more like a European Court filled with jesters and courtiers and grey eminences advising in the shadows. But Versailles could never be this hypocritically provincial --- and proud of it. DC is America, through and through --- America, ca. 1690. The Reverend Broder sentences the heretics to the stake while Sally Goodwyfe runs around screaming "burn them, burn them!"
And yes, if you haven't already, take a look at Digby's argument and see if you agree.

Make no mistake, The Villagers dearly miss that kinder, gentler time when witches and wayward women knew their place or were drowned; and shooting, whipping and enslaving brown people was all the rage. Life is so much more complicated now.

1 Comment:

shep said...

I love the Village metaphor: parochial, insular, inbred. Yup, that describes the beltway establishment just about perfectly.