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{PDF EPUB} This Town Two Parties and a Funeral Plus Plenty Of Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} This Town Two Parties and a Funeral — plus plenty of valet parking! — in America’s Gilded Capital by This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral--plus plenty of valet parking!--in America's Gilded Capital. Mark Leibovich, chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, previously served for six years as a political correspondent in the Washington bureau of the Times. Earlier he worked for nine years at the Washington Post. Leibovich received a National Magazine Award in 2011. The author selected the title from a list including "Suck-up City:" "You'll Always Have Lunch in This Town Again," and "The Club." After working in Washington, D.C., for 15 years, he learned that This Town imposes on its "actors a reflex toward devious and opportunistic behavior, and a tendency to care about public relations more than any other aspect of their professional lives--and maybe even personal lives." This Town as Washingtonians refer to the place, festers "faux disgust and a wry distance--a verbal tic as a secret handshake." A play on the two-word refrain people in This Town frequently use, "This Town" functions as a cliche of "belonging, knowingness, and self-mocking civic disdain" Then there is "The Club" made up of This Town's city fathers, whose "spinning cabal of people in politics and media can be as potent in D.C. as Congress" The club itself has been known by various names: "Permanent Washington;' "The Political Class," "The Chattering Class," "The Usual Suspects," "The Beltway Establishment," "The Chamber," "The Echo-System:' "The Gang of 500," "The Movable Mass,' and others. Leibovich confesses he belongs to The Club. Participating in many hundreds of social and political events among members of The Club, he has profiled countless political figures and capably writes about politics in the "big media outlet." The book analyzes This Town in a time of alleged corrective action. To the author, "Suck-up City' describes the Beltway culture's depraved contamination with sycophancy--sucking up to people to please them or to get something from them. Winning in Washington means "winning people over--sometimes by argument; craft; obsequiousness and favors; pressure; or a chest-thumping, ape-type show of strength." One of Leibovich's major Washington criticisms concerns lobbyists. The biggest shift in Washington over the last 40 years has been the arrival of "Big Money, politics as an industry, and lobbyists" During 2009, the most profitable year ever for the lobbying profession, special interests collectively spent $3,470,000,000 lobbying the Federal government. Complicated current legislation will provide profitable business for lobbyists. Despite the exorbitant cost of hiring lobbyists, corporations equate lobbyists' ability to "shape, tweak, or kill even minute legislative loopholes with saving millions of dollars." Because hundreds of lobbyists call themselves "public affairs consultants," "senior advisers," or "strategic advisers," Washington "crawls with people not registered to lobby, but who get paid to advocate fulltime for some business, organization, or industry." Leibevich suggests that no single development in the last century has "altered the workings of American democracy as much as political consulting." As consultants have replaced party bosses as "wielders of political power gained not by votes but by money," corporations "have tripled the amount of money spent on lobbying and public affairs consulting in D.C." Now a full grown and dynamic industry, lobbying has become a "self- sustaining system all its own" In great detail, Leibovich includes his coverage of the 2008 and 2012 elections. He credits Pres. Barack Obama's success to David Axelrod, the "message maven" responsible for "devising Obama's political rise." The Obama campaign, a '"young, grassroots-oriented and data-driven machine" ran circles around the opposition. Axelrod "revered" Obama, and Obama highly respected Axelrod. Although Hillary Clinton became "indispensable" to Obama's team, the Clintons reserved a special place for Axelrod on their "dead-to-us list" for his "past sins," especially his aggressive campaigning against Hillary in 2008. Leibovich calls Bill Clinton the "star of the week" for the best speech of either convention. Obama suggested naming Bill Clinton to a new position as "Secretory for Explaining Stuff" By the end of the campaign, Bill Clinton "owned the country again; . in fact, he owned the president." In response to conventioneers who asked Hillary if she would be running for president in 2016, she answered, "No way" However, Bill suggested she should "not be so definitive." Hillary frequently invokes an Eleanor Roosevelt mantra: 'Woman in politics need to develop skin as tough as a rhinoceros hide." Clinton "feels herself very vulnerable," and her response is to make herself "bulletproof." Always on guard, she is a private person despite her international prestige. Hillary, "off somewhere on the planet as queen of the world" appears above the "small silliness of This Town." The Clintons always have been "grand masters of friendship"; Friends of the Clintons (FOBs and FOHs) became their "subcommittees of the political class." The convention at times "resembled a Clinton reunion, a staging area for the Clintonites gearing up for what seemed inevitable- Hillary in 2016." The author contrasts the 2012 Republican convention with the Democratic convention at which the "Unquestioned Big Man on Campus" Chris Christie delivered the keynote address. Christie, "who tells it like it is and gives it to you straight," carries the anonyms "killer persona of charismatic crankiness" and "Governor Powder Keg." In his speech, dubbed the "Me Note Address," Christie used 1,800 words in the first 16 minutes to talk about New Jersey before mentioning the name of the nominee. ISBN 13: 9780399170683. This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral--Plus Plenty of Valet Parking!--in America's Gilded Capital. Leibovich, Mark. This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. Hailed as "vastly entertaining and deeply troubling" ("The New York Times Book Review"), "as insidery as "Game Change"" ("The Washington Post"), and a "hysterically funny portrait of the capital's vanities and ambitions" ("The New Yorker"), "This Town "captured America's attention as "the "political book of 2013. With a new Afterword by author Mark Leibovich, the book that is changing the national conversation about Washington is available in a stunning new edition. Washington, D.C., might be loathed from every corner of the nation, yet these are fun and busy days at this nexus of big politics, big money, big media, and big vanity. There are no Democrats and Republicans anymore in the nation's capital, just millionaires. In "This Town, "Mark Leibovich, chief national correspondent for "The New""York Times Magazine, "presents a blistering, stunning--and often hysterically funny-- examination of our ruling class's incestuous "media industrial complex." Through his eyes, we discover how the funeral for a beloved newsman becomes the social event of the year. How political reporters are fetishized for their ability to get their names into the predawn e-mail sent out by the city's most powerful and puzzled-over journalist. How a disgraced Hill aide can overcome ignominy and maybe emerge with a more potent "brand" than many elected members of Congress. And how an administration bent on "changing Washington" can be sucked into the ways of "This Town "with the same ease with which Tea Party insurgents can, once elected, settle into it like a warm bath. Outrageous, fascinating, and very necessary, "This Town "is a must-read, whether you're inside the Beltway--or just trying to get there. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. " This Town is funny, it's interesting, and it is demoralizing . I loved it as much as you can love something which hurts your heart." --John Oliver, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. "In addition to his reporting talents, Leibovich is a writer of excellent zest. At times his book is laugh-out-loud (as well as weep-out-loud). He is an exuberant writer, even as his reporting leaves one reaching for Xanax. [ This Town ] is vastly entertaining and deeply troubling." --Christopher Buckley, The New York Times Book Review. "It's been the summer of This Town. What lingers from This Town is what will linger in Washington well after its current dinosaurs are extinct: the political culture owned by big money." --Frank Rich, New York Magazine. " Many decades from now, a historian looking at where America lost its way could use This Town as a primary source." --Fareed Zakaria. "Here it is, Washington in all its splendid, sordid glory. [Leibovich] seems to wear those special glasses that allow you to x-ray the outside and see what's really going on. Start to finish, this is a brilliant portrait - pointillist, you might say, or modern realist. So brilliant that once it lands on a front table at Politics & Prose Leibovich will never be able to have lunch in this town again. There are also important insights tucked in among the barbs. So here's to all the big mouths, big shots, big machers, and big jerks. In case you're wondering, Mark Leibovich is on to every one of you, and his portrayal of This Town is spot on." --David Shribman, The New York Times. "In his new book This Town, Mark Leibovich commits an act of treason against the Washington establishment. Thoroughly entertaining. Leibovich is a keen observer and energetic writer." --Reid Pillifant, New York Observer. " This Town is a frothy Beltway insider tell-all . rollicking fun and sharply written. A big, sprawling fun beach read of a book--snappy and well- crafted."-- Susan Gardner , The Daily Kos. " This Town is as entertaining for the broader picture it paints of a capital that corrupts even the most incorruptible as it is for the salacious gossip that dominated early reviews.
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