Posted on 07/07/2012 3:50:25 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Dinners were served in the basement. Ambassadors, generals with many stars, senior White House officials and closely read columnists — all would walk past the yellowing kitchen, which looked as if it hadn’t been updated since the Ford administration, and down a narrow flight of stairs into the dimly lighted dining room. Guests were arrayed around the table according to rank, with the most important ones squeezed in the center. Although the Old World meals could be quite elaborate — venison paté, duck in bitter orange — they were prepared and served entirely by the host, a stickler for protocol named Albrecht Muth.
Muth liked to refer to his Georgetown row house, which technically belonged to his wife, the journalist Viola Drath, as the Albrechtory. Guests at their dinners included Anne Patterson, Obama’s ambassador to Egypt; Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift; and Pierre Salinger, the Kennedy courtier, followed by his little white dog. Antonin Scalia was another guest, and Muth liked to joke about the time he asked Scalia to officiate his wedding: “Will you marry me?” Muth inquired. “Well, I’m already married,” Scalia replied. In 2006, even Dick Cheney emerged from his bunker to attend a party that Drath hosted.
The couple’s cachet had nothing to do with wealth, however. They lived frugally, mostly off Drath’s first husband’s pension. Nor was it based on their résumés. He once started a small NGO; she wrote articles for a German financial daily. What they possessed was an exquisite understanding of the anxieties of the city’s elite — and an awareness of the power of eccentricity in a city that has little of it. Drath was 44 years older than her husband, a disparity in age that was accentuated further when he referred to her as “madam.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Did SHE falsify her background? I thought that she was a straight arrow with a real resume.
I’m amazed at the names around their table — Scalia, Cheney, Clift, Soros. That’s quite a collection. And then the whole Iraq fantasy...Something about this reminds me of the Sahalie fiasco. It makes me think that the Washington Power Elite is just a house of cards that can be easily fooled by just about any con artist.
It is interesting that mention is made in the second paragraph that Antonin Scalia was a dinner guest of this charlatan. Apparently that is one of the "hooks" to get people to read the rest. (Riding the tail of the SCOTUS decision on Obamatax, perhaps?)
The article says Muth's father died when he was an infant and his mother "turned down opportunities to ascend higher", thus denying him his supposed rightful heritage. As a result, he develops into a self-indulgent, narcissistic, power-hungry homosexual who says he understands the reason Hillary stayed in her marriage to Bill Clinton. While there are definitely signficant similarities between Muth and Obama, I doubt that the NYT editors actually want people to come to the realization that Obama is a "fabulist" like Muth.
Seems to me that Obama is doing to America what Muth did to his wife. Both seem to act out of revenge toward their mothers, whose decisions caused them essentially to grow up fatherless. What is truly disturbing is that there are so many people who know the emperor is naked but are unwilling to leave his parade.
Thanks for posting a very well witten article. Elk, this is a long read, but WELL worth it.
Not consciously.
But fabulists create a vacuum...a mystery that readers and writers want to fill.
The more we hear about the "liberties" Obama took with "Dreams from My Father," the more that vacuum grows for him (Obama) and his archetype, the "fabulist and/or con man."
And the more interest there is in similar stories...like Muth.
Barack Obama may be the biggest "fabulist" of all.
And this deviants, unfit to manage life, are touted by their enablers in the media as the “beautiful people” and Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential.”
Perhaps these pathetic poseurs make the twisted media mavens feel important. They feed on each other.
According to the article, Muth said that Soros said that about him. As much as I despise Soros, I would bet that was simply yet another self-aggrandizing lie by Muth. Fascinating article.
Strange tale.
Really interesting story. Thanks for posting.
Does anybody doubt how shallow and gullible these Washington elite are?
“That first encounter is still vivid in Brooks’s mind. “I remember distinctly an image of–we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” In the fall of 2006, two days after Obama’s The Audacity of Hope hit bookstores, Brooks published a glowing Times column. The headline was “Run, Barack, Run.”
“I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.”
http://michellemalkin.com/2011/09/20/fishwrap-of-records-resident-sap-confesses/
Shallow...definitely. You can add craven, feckless.
Gullible... I'm not so sure...some surely are.
I think most understand how the game is played and play along to retain whatever influence and power they can attain so to empower themselves at our expense.
Perhaps -- we can hope -- another Horowitz or Tom Wolfe in embryo?
Meanwhile, this tale offers a cautionary note to status-driven women: "Neither borrower nor lender be -- nor a beard, which can be hazardous to your health."
So very VERY creepy! How many secrets were shared with him? Is he the model for King Bozo Osmosis?
Donors:Anybody remember ol' Bernie Schwartz? Guy who MIRV'ed the Chicom strategic missile force for Slick Willie while Bernie was at Loral?
David and Lucile Packard Foundation Pew Charitable Trusts John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Board of Directors
- Eric Benhamou - Chairman & CEO, Benhamou Global Ventures and Chairman, 3Com Corporation
- Scott Delman - Founder, Capital Z Investment Partners
- James Fallows - Chairman, New America Foundation
- Francis Fukuyama - Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University
- Ted Halstead - Founding President & CEO, New America Foundation
- Noosheen Hashemi - President, HAND Foundation
- Laurene Powell Jobs - President of the Board, College Track
- Kati Marton - Author and Journalist
- Walter Russell Mead - Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations
- Lenny Mendonca - Chairman, McKinsey Global Institute
- Steven Rattner - Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group, LLC
- Diane Ravitch - Research Professor of Education, New York University
- Eric Schmidt - Chairman & CEO, Google, Inc.
- Bernard L. Schwartz - Retired Chairman and CEO, Loral Space & Communications Ltd.
- Anne-Marie Slaughter - Dean, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University
- Laura D'Andrea Tyson - Dean, London Business School
- Christine Todd Whitman - President, Whitman Strategy Group
- Daniel Yergin - Chairman, Cambridge Energy Research Associates
- Fareed Zakaria - Editor, Newsweek Internationals
Leadership Council
"New America's Leadership Council, chaired by John C. Whitehead, recognizes those individuals who contribute $25,000 or more to the Foundation each year. As members of the Leadership Council, they participate in the intellectual life of the Foundation in numerous ways. For instance, they are invited to attend a special annual retreat with New America senior staff, Fellows and Board of Directors, as well as a series of salon dinners across the country.
- Eric A. Benhamou - Chairman, 3Com Corporation & Palm Inc.; Chairman and CEO, Benhamou Global Ventures, LLC
- Susan Chambers - Executive Vice President, Wal-Mart
- Lewis B. Cullman - Founder & CEO, Cullman Ventures, Inc.
- Laurene Powell Jobs - President of the Board, College Track
- Peter Marber - Global Head of GEM Fixed Income and Currencies, HSBC Halbis Partners
- Aria Mehrabi - Principal & Co-Founder, Pacific Star Capital
- Lenny Mendonca - Chairmain, McKinsey Global Institute
- Eric Mindich - Founder, Eton Park Capital Management
- Steven Rattner - Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group, LLC
- Eric Schmidt - Chairman & CEO, Google, Inc.
- Bernard L. Schwartz -Retired Chairman & CEO, Loral Space & Communications Ltd.
- Harry Sloan - Chairman & CEO, MGM, Inc.
- Jonathan Soros - President & Co-Deputy Chairman, Soros Fund Management, LLC
- John C. Whitehead - Chairman, The Goldman Sachs Foundation
How 'bout America-hating liberal double-domer Walter Russell Mead? And who said Christine Todd Whitman was a librul?
bmfl
Interesting the Franklin Foer is a fellow at the New America Foundation and that is Soros-backed. What does that say about this article? It is not very flattering about Soros. Is this damage control?
BTW I see the odious Steven Rattner is on the board of The New America Foundation. Plus there are at least three hedge fund managers on this list.
Yes, gullible is probably the wrong word.
Craven and feckless are good descriptors too.
Eric Schmidt! This is disgusting. No wonder I despise Google.
I love the NYT comments that try to associate this flamer with Scalia and Cheney, ignoring the George Soros financing of this guy’s lunacies.
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