Most of you are no doubt familiar with the Washington Post salon scandal, where people with very deep pockets were invited to pony up $25,000 USD in order to have a dinner at the house of publisher Katharine Weymouth.
What would you get for that kind of scratch? The movers and shakers at the newspaper would personally introduce you to the movers and shakers at the White House, as well as the reporters who covered them. Pay them cash, and the good folks at the WaPo would create an instant handshake relationship with the very people who are shaping the future of the country, and those who shape public perception of same. If you are a representative from a special interest group, a corporation or lobbyist, this was like sounding the dinner bell at fat camp.
As the article I linked to above points out, this sort of thing is done all the time by newspapers with their foot in the White House press room door. But this time around it was just a bit too blatant to pass the smell test. The wage slaves in the WaPo’s very own bullpen, the ink stained wretches that are never invited to any of the best shindigs because they are “gray people”, screamed bloody murder. No one had asked them, they claimed. HA! Like anyone who spends their days in a newspaper’s board room on the top floor would ask what a reporter thought when bucks were on the line!
that he shoved his copy into my hands and demanded that I read it. He came to regret that decision.