PROM NIGHT
LABASH, MATT
Casual PROM NIGHT Every spring in Washington, a ritual commences with the predictability of the cherry blossoms blooming around the Tidal Basin or the silvery hickory shad making their...
...We are, after all, journalists...
...As Mark Twain wrote, “There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it...
...Doing these things is like body surfi ng with a wave, rather than swimming against it...
...Now head out...
...When I remarked that he couldn’t kick me out of a party that wasn’t his, he headed out...
...After traveling with him as he explored a Reform party presidential candidacy, I wrote a piece unfortunately titled “A Chump on the Stump...
...Often, during these encounters, I do most of the talking, fi guring after so many years of taking from celebrities, it’s my turn to give back...
...I’ve made small talk with Elle Macpherson, who affected cool detachment but who clearly wanted to take me home and ravish me, though I couldn’t, because I’m married and not into shallow supermodels...
...Therefore, mindful of La Rochefoucauld’s maxim that “it is our own vanity that makes the vanity of others intolerable to us,” I’ve managed to attend for 12 straight angst-free years...
...Months later when I encountered him at the dinner, he said, “I think you know what I think of you—not much...
...Neither is usually a problem for us...
...Along with my friends—a loose coalition of media types who keep getting older but whose emotional maturity stays lodged at 22 years of age—we have found the keys to successful attendance...
...I’ve held Bo Derek’s hand, while cooing, “There are two kinds of people in this world...
...Frumpy reporters put on their party heels and enshroud their hunchbacks in Men’s Wearhouse tuxedos, welcome a cavalcade of so many B-list stars that it feels like The Love Boat without Dramamine, and pack the ballroom of the Washington Hilton, a.k.a...
...I’ve gotten buzzed with Sean Penn, when we swapped stories about his former relative, B-1 Bob Dornan (his brother was married to Dornan’s daughter...
...It is always a joy to see a grown man interrupt his conversation with Condoleezza Rice to exclaim, “Hey, it’s the fat guy from Survivor...
...And I have told Dana Delaney that I work for the most infl uential organ in the history of political thought, which she seemed to believe, though she’d never heard of us...
...And after I asked Heidi Klum how to tell the difference between a supermodel and just a really swell model, she cocked her head like an adorably confused puppy...
...Those who understand [her 1984 softcore fi lm] Bolero and those who don’t...
...But so what...
...How this differs from your average episode of Countdown with Keith Olbermann has never been entirely clear to me...
...I’ve always respected him for that...
...the Hinckley Hilton” where Ronald Reagan nearly met his end, for the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner...
...I’ve been bullied by Donald Trump...
...Bo, I understand...
...I part with these secrets reluctantly, since when I lecture in schools, I like to tell the kids not to drink unless it’s for a very good reason, like making the pain stop...
...All of this is to celebrate their favorite cause: themselves...
...Her smile said, “Thank you,” while her eyes said, “Security...
...But our twofold approach is simple: (a) Have no shame, and (b) ingest copious amounts of free hooch...
...Casual PROM NIGHT Every spring in Washington, a ritual commences with the predictability of the cherry blossoms blooming around the Tidal Basin or the silvery hickory shad making their spawning run up the Potomac...
...The media being the media, however, they can never celebrate anything—even themselves— without feeling lousy about it...
...I wanted to take her to PetSmart, to buy her a soft toy with a bell in it...
...Therefore, I tend to collect memorable celebrity encounters like scalps, afterwards putting them in my Special Memories box...
...MATT LABASH...
...The usual administration and chat-show hacks who pass for celebrities in D.C...
...It was classy, as he would say...
...now have to contend with those of the Hollywood variety, knocking them down a peg in the social order...
...One of the joys of the dinner is watching the regular Washington hierarchy get upended...
...Sure, their attention, even if commandeered, appeals to my vanity...
...It has gotten us through the dinner, the after-parties, the after-after-parties, and our super-secret triple-after-party, which we like to call “breakfast...
...So after plunking down thousands for tables, after spending months maneuvering for tickets to the right after-party, after keeping calendars clear so that they’re not on assignment during Prom, as it’s often called, the default posture of roughly 80 percent of the crowd is that the dinner is beneath them...
...They feign disgust at the preening, the pomposity, the oily social calibration that is at once obsequious and pretentious...
Vol. 13 • May 2008 • No. 33
