The Gimlet Eye

It’s Funny till Someone Gets Hurt

MARCH comes to Washington, bringing with it our annual spring fling of parties—deafening, crowd-choked affairs, held in hotel ballrooms the size of football fields. They are usually sponsored by large organizations as tributes to themselves. And what tributes! The food is cold; the cocktails are lukewarm. The after-dinner speeches stretch to Homeric lengths, lasting long after the water glasses have been drained and the table wine has disappeared. A woman with a medium-sized bladder could easily spend half the evening waiting in line for the powder room, and her husband could spend the other half looking for her coat; and on the ride home both would discover that neither had missed anything of interest. No true Washingtonian would pass up such a party for all the world.

Featured Tags

It’s Funny till Someone Gets Hurt

MARCH comes to Washington, bringing with it our annual spring fling of parties—deafening, crowd-choked affairs, held in hotel ballrooms the size of football fields. They are usually sponsored by large organizations as tributes to themselves. And what tributes! The food is cold; the cocktails are lukewarm. The after-dinner speeches stretch to Homeric lengths, lasting long after the water glasses have been drained and the table wine has disappeared. A woman with a medium-sized bladder could easily spend half the evening waiting in line for the powder room, and her husband could spend the other half looking for her coat; and on the ride home both would discover that neither had missed anything of interest. No true Washingtonian would pass up such a party for all the world.