The Village 1 percenters
by digby
Look who's joining the country club:
David Gregory, host of NBC’s Meet The Press, and Bret Baier, host of Fox News’s Special Report, are among the latest applicants to the Chevy Chase Club, the historic social club that has catered to Washington’s wealthiest for over a century.
The Club’s recent "Membership Report" shows that both Gregory and Baier are up for consideration as “newly-proposed candidates for membership.” Gregory is being sponsored by Joseph Stettinius and William M. Walker. Baier is being sponsored Burke F. Hayes and by Brit Hume, the former anchor of Fox News’s Special Report.
The Chevy Chase Club would not disclose the cost of admission, but a member told me that the initiation fee is $80,000 and that members pay $6,000 in annual dues. The member also said that Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s Face The Nation, was a member of the club.
Through an NBC spokesperson, Gregory declined to comment. Spokespeople at Fox News did not return a request for comment.
The Chevy Chase Club was founded in 1892. As recently as 1976, it did not accept Jewish or African-American members, according to a report in the New York Times. And despite reforms, some who have visited the club believe it has maintained an atmosphere reminiscent of earlier days.
“Order a cocktail at the Chevy Chase country-club and you'll step back into ante-bellum Savannah,” one British reporter for The Telegraph observed last year. “The blacks wait on Wasps, showing all the deference expected of them. You won't find many Cohens either, lounging on the well-kept lawn.”
I can hardly wait for the next time Gregory places himself in the role of the average American as, like all Villagers, he is wont to do:
So this morning David Gregory, in the great tradition of his forebear Tim Russert, was just a regular workin' dude interviewin' the big wigs about the troubles of average Murikins jess like him:
MR. GREGORY: My mother out in California, I presume, is watching this morning. She's like a lot of Americans, worried about her job and wondering why not just bank lending, but something called nonbank lending, securitization--what is that, and why does that matter to her?
Just like Joe and Jane American everywhere, Dave's mom is fearing for her financial future and would like an explanation for why she finds herself feeling so insecure.
I have an idea. Maybe Dave could get his wife, the former General Counsel for Fannie Mae, to explain all this high flying financial mumbo jumbo to her mother-in-law. And if worse comes to worse and Ma Gregory loses her job, maybe Dave could hire her to clean his multi-million dollar Nantucket vacation home.
This is the problem with the political press. There is no earthly reason for David Gregory to join this club. He has all the access he needs to any powerful person on earth. The only reason for him to join it is because he wants to be among other people like himself (and away from the polloi.) Do you think old Dave will be covering his friends down at the club with the vigor that's necessary in these times? Yeah, I didn't think so.
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