The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

Sally Quinn wedding feud: Don’t fire Ms. Quinn — turn her ‘at large’

My “Don’t fire” head­line is for the ben­e­fit of out-of-towners.

As a close friend of the Gra­hams, the own­ing fam­ily of the Wash­ing­ton Post, she in fact comes wrapped in asbestos.

So why am I writ­ing this gen­er­ally pro-Quinn post (amid the “duel­ing wed­dings” con­tro­versy—over the com­mon date of April 10, shared by her son’s wed­ding and the pre­vi­ously planned one for Ben Bradlee’s grand­daugh­ter)?

No, I don’t know Sally Quinn. And I’m baf­fled how the author of The Party could com­mit such a gaffe and spread the bad feel­ings in print. Even if her expla­na­tion might hold up—wedding plan­ners are hardly beyond the reach of Murphy’s Law—I winced when I read there wasn’t a dan­ger of an over­lap in hoped-for atten­dees. Grand­fa­thers don’t count when the bride-to-be is the first­born of ten grand­chil­dren? And when she clearly and dearly wants Ben Bradlee to come? Should the National Cathedral’s avail­abil­ity on X Day count more than a grand­daugh­ter? What a fine exam­ple of respectabil­ity as the enemy of decency.

But, and this is a big one, let’s remem­ber the famous quote attrib­uted to the late Phil Gra­ham: jour­nal­ism is “the first draft of his­tory.” Fur­ther­more, it can also be in a sense the first draft of lit­er­a­ture. When F. Scott Fitzger­ald cre­ated Jay Gatsby, he may have relied in part on news­pa­per clip­pings or at least a clip. As both a jour­nal­ist and a nov­el­ist, I myself would be grumpy if the Post nudged Ms. Quinn into retire­ment before she absolutely had to go. Talk about insti­tu­tional mem­o­ries and promis­ing “first drafts”!

Even her crit­ics tend to con­cede that Ms. Quinn is the doyenne of the George­town party cir­cuit. How often do you get the word—in your morn­ing paper—directly from an authen­tic doyenne? If any­thing, the Post should give her an “at large” col­umn, with a spe­cial man­date to do what she did at the start of her career. A lit­tle less eti­quette advice, please, and more of the old Sally’s anthro­po­log­i­cal candor.

• The Watergate editor and the society legend: A loving look at them by their son who lives ‘A Different Life’
• Sally Quinn’s ‘Party’ column dropped from print: Shades of LBJ’s Hoover surprise for her husband?
• Rexwood Garst and the darker side of ‘meritocracy’ in journalism, politics and other fields
• Sally Quinn, snobbery and the Mink Stole Ladies Syndrome
• The Georgetown name game: Roffman, Rothman, Solomon and The Georgetowner