The Decline and Fall of the Washington Post: Sally Quinn

She was once a star reporter for the Style section. Then she made the big career move and married the boss. Today Sally Quinn is the “doyenne” of Washington, a celebrity in her own right and a fixture of the D.C. social set. And although she’s never had an original thought in her head — by the time Quinn gets around to it, it’s long since solidified into conventional wisdom –

– alas, she also still writes.

About “faith,” no less, having once bellied up to the communion rail in a Catholic church and partaking of the Eucharist, even though she’s not Catholic. (Her “co-moderator” of the “On Faith” column is none other than Jon Meacham, the man who drove Newsweek into a ditch, where it was recently auctioned off for a buck plus parts.)

A mosque near Ground Zero? Who’s going to pay for it? Where are they getting the money?

This is the cry of the conspiracy theorists who claim that the mosque will be built with suspicious money, including charities possibly connected to terrorism. Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich are intensely opposed to the mosque. They want it to be moved. I have a great idea. Why don’t they find a new property and personally raise the money themselves to fund the $100 million community center? They could call the project The Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich Foundation for Religious Freedom. It has a nice ring to it. I think they should put their money where their mouths are. Nothing could be more patriotic or American; it’s what this country is all about. It would take, especially with Palin’s popular following, probably 20 minutes to collect the amount needed.

Even by the current low standards of excellence that obtain at the kiddie-corps-run WaPo, this is breathtakingly fatuous. By now, it’s clear that the denizens of the Beltway look upon Sarah Palin the way the inhabitants of Constantinople viewed the Muslim hordes during the final siege of eastern Christendom.

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