The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

Sally Quinn, snobbery and the Mink Stole Ladies Syndrome

Wash­ing­ton is full of peo­ple telling oth­ers how to live their lives or at least wish­ing they could. Same for the media world. I call it the Mink Stole Ladies Syn­drome, based on a party scene in The Solomon Scan­dals from the D.C. of sev­eral decades ago.

Sally Ster­ling Quinn, with her judg­men­tal dis­sec­tions of social-climbers such as the late Steve Mar­tin­dale, isn’t entirely inno­cent (nor am I, since this post is a bit of a Catch-22).

Hav­ing enter­tained for eons on the George­town party cir­cuit, not to men­tion all her media work, Ms. Quinn prob­a­bly has com­mit­ted her own share of solid-gold gaffes. She might admit to as much. On top of every­thing else, her rela­tions with her stepchil­dren have been Katrina-stormy at times.

But could cri­tiques of Ms. Quinn’s life, in Van­ity Fair, Gawker and else­where, be a lit­tle over the top—complete with Gawker’s high-schoolish head­line, “Sally Quinn Is a Creep”?

Even the Van­ity Fair writer, Evge­nia Peretz, acknowl­edges the obvi­ous; yes, Ms. Quinn has been a hyper-dedicated mother toward Quinn Bradlee, who suf­fers from learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. She could eas­ily have fol­lowed an expert’s advice and have locked him up in an insti­tu­tion, free­ing many thou­sands of extra hours for her jour­nal­ism and enter­tain­ing. On top of that, despite all the time Ms. Peretz must have lav­ished on her highly read­able pro­file of Ms. Quinn, do we know the full story of the soci­ety doyenne’s rela­tions with the stepchil­dren? Fam­i­lies can mys­tify and sur­prise even friends. Con­sider the sep­a­ra­tion of Al and Tip­per Gore. Remem­ber? The Gores’ mar­riage would last for­ever, while the Clin­tons would race to the courts for a divorce  the very nanosec­ond Bill left the White House.

I’d also cau­tion the media against the reflex­ive dis­missals of Ms. Quinn as a pure elit­ist snob. There is that side of her, granted, and Sally-haters have even sum­moned up a com­par­i­son between Ms. Quinn and Marie Antoinette, who, like her, glo­ried in the rural life or, as the crit­ics might put it, the syn­thetic rus­tic. But wait. The ulti­mate elit­ist wouldn’t blog for the Wash­ing­ton Post and write party tips for the masses; do you really think Ms. Quinn is the same as Washington’s old cave-dwellers? What’s more, con­sider her enthu­si­as­tic approval of Quinn’s engage­ment to a yoga instruc­tor named Pary Williamson (photo). For all I know, maybe Ms. Williamson is a Vas­sar hon­ors grad­u­ate born to blue-blooded mil­lion­aires. But buried in the Van­ity Fair arti­cle are a few facts that sug­gest oth­er­wise: “While some observers ques­tion Pary’s motives—she seemed to appear out of nowhere and is said to have had a hard­scrab­ble life—those who know her dis­agree. ‘She really is a very upbeat, very exu­ber­ant, sweet, nice per­son and believes in all the spir­i­tual val­ues of yoga and all that stuff,’ says one of her stu­dents. ‘The whole idea of your life lived out in pub­lic is not her style at all.’”

Let’s decode that, or try to. What does Ms. Peretz mean by “hard­scrab­ble life”? That like most other small-business peo­ple, Ms. Williamson has had to strug­gle? That she might actu­ally come from a mere middle-class back­ground or, gasp, even below? If so, the facts would not jibe very well with the image of Ms. Quinn as an unmit­i­gated snob. Granted, Ms. Williamson is an instruc­tor to such lumi­nar­ies as David Gre­gory, Rahm Emanuel and Katharine Wey­mouth, but who’s to say her con­nec­tions will endure for­ever? Might Sally Quinn’s eager­ness to do the right thing for her son have beaten out snob­bery? Based on what I’ve read, I think so. Quinn Bradlee has writ­ten of his family’s prepa­ra­tions for his life after his elderly par­ents die. If the pub­lic­ity is right—I can’t say—Ms. Williamson will be a part­ner rather than a mere “caretaker.”

While Ms. Quinn’s rela­tions with parts of her extended fam­ily are dys­func­tional in the extreme, I sus­pect that her own imme­di­ate fam­ily, step-children excluded, has been far, far more func­tional than those of many of the crit­ics. Could a lit­tle jeal­ousy be at work here? I won­der after hav­ing read A Dif­fer­ent Life (Quinn’s mem­oirs) and A Life’s Work: Fathers and Sons, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Ben and Quinn Bradlee, “with obser­va­tions by Sally Quinn.” Father and son love to saw down trees and do other yard work, and Ms. Quinn has bought her own pink model. In fact, the fam­ily acquired a retreat in rural Mary­land because the one in West Vir­ginia was too remote, in case Quinn needed med­ical help for one of his many health prob­lems. Antoinette syn­thetic? Hardly. Tree-work is what Ben Bradlee enjoyed as a boy: “Pop and I worked out in the woods from the begin­ning.” Ms. Quinn rec­og­nized her husband’s love of tree-chopping and learned to feel com­fort­able with a saw. In this case she might as well have been a Wal­mart mom.

Going by some morsels in the Van­ity Fair arti­cle, I’d won­der, too, about Ms. Quinn’s ene­mies por­tray­ing her as a full-strength home-wrecker. The mar­riage may already been doomed. Tony Bradlee “had found Wash­ing­ton jour­nal­ism shal­low,” writes Ms. Peretz, and “was get­ting increas­ingly swept up in the mys­ti­cism of the George Gur­d­ji­eff spir­i­tual move­ment.” By con­trast, accord­ing to Bradlee’s mem­oirs, Sally Quinn “found the all-consuming nature of my involve­ment with the Post nat­ural, even exhil­a­rat­ing.” If Sally Quinn hadn’t appeared, might another woman? I’m not con­don­ing Bradlee’s tim­ing. But it’s his life, and I find it end­lessly baf­fling how peo­ple ded­i­cated to the right of cor­po­ra­tions to foul the Gulf of Mexico—or at least try to lobby away the reg­u­la­tory apparatus—would want to dic­tate their “moral­ity” to Bradlee and wife.

Sim­ply put, although I’d never con­fuse Sally Quinn with Mother Teresa, it’s time for some tolerance.

Ama­zon mys­tery: As of this writ­ing, I don’t see a sin­gle cus­tomer review of A Life’s Work (rank 28,940 in Books) on Amazon—rather strange, given Sally Quinn’s stature in the media. Part of the rea­son could be that Quinn Bradlee’s mem­oirs have already scooped the new book and more directly address the needs of par­ents of chil­dren with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. Another could be what oth­ers have already noted—the dueling-weddings con­tro­versy. Still another could be that A Life’s Work is so full of inti­mate details that out­siders might feel they are tres­pass­ing, espe­cially if they believe they can­not be com­pletely lauda­tory. I’d rate Work four out of five stars. The book has its flaws but is worth read­ing if you want between-the-lines knowl­edge of the ways of cer­tain mem­bers of the Post media élite. Ditto—as in the case of A Dif­fer­ent Life—if you’re the par­ent of a child with learn­ing disabilities.

• 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
• The Georgetown name game: Roffman, Rothman, Solomon and The Georgetowner
• Sally Quinn wedding feud: Don’t fire Ms. Quinn — turn her ‘at large’