![]() ![]() “People feel under siege and are not saying yes to meetings,” said journalist Steve Clemons, an omnipresent Washington events-hopper whose foreign travel plans got scuttled due to the virus. While the opera was well-attended, she said, the VIP after-party “definitely was not jam-packed at all.” The Kennedy Center on Thursday cancel l ed all public performances and events until the end of March. Kristin Rae Cecchi, who does high-end home renovations in D.C., noted her surprise at seeing Ruth Bader Ginsburg-who has been the subject of half-serious prayers from liberals hoping the 86-year-old Supreme Court justice will steer well clear of potential exposure to the virus-at the Kennedy Center’s performance of “Samson and Delilah” last weekend. “It was the first party where it was heavily elbow bump,” Carlson noted. A recent book party she attended for Charlotte Alter, whose father, Jonathan Alter, was a longtime Washington correspondent for Newsweek, reflected the city’s changing mood. Margaret Carlson, a decades-long denizen of both Washington journalism and Washington parties, said she is carrying Clorox disinfectant wipes everywhere she goes and avoiding watching films having anything to do with contagion. She still had a party Saturday night, but her kids put up a sign, with a drawing of the coronavirus, on the door saying: “PLEASE No Hugs/Handshakes. “When you greet someone, you don’t shake their hand and there’s no air kiss and there’s no hug,” she said. Juleanna Glover, a PR maven known for hosting book parties at her Kalorama home, said the virus was rewriting the unspoken rules of social interaction. “I am panicked, because what we do for a living here is have gatherings of people, and we do events and create guest lists, and I think it’s going to affect everybody.” “The South by Southwest thing, that to me was like, ‘Oh my God, this is real.’ How are you going to get 30,000 people in one room?” she said, referring to her worries about the upcoming political conventions, slated for the summer. Kimball Stroud, an events planner, says her own clients had yet to cancel their plans, but wonders how long that can last. Some elite private schools closed early for spring break Georgetown University switched to remote learning Amtrak has shut down several trains on the #ThisTown-heavy corridor between Washington and New York, citing “lower demand.” gala of all: the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, planned for April 25, a celebrity-studded undertaking that drives an entire weekend of events and unquestionably falls afoul of the city’s temporary new health guidelines. The leading congressional dinner, put on by the Washington Press Club Foundation and scheduled for March 25, was also called off.Ī decision point is looming for the grandest D.C. The Gridiron Dinner, an annual white-tie gathering dating back 135 years, was postponed this week. Washington is a market of a different kind, and by the standards of the things the city values-connectivity, media currency and perceptions of power-the political capital is heading into a bear market no less than the financial capital.Ĭoronavirus is slamming into D.C.’s political-media complex just as the city’s equivalent of prom season is due to kick off. The National Gallery postponed an invitation-only VIP reception for its new Degas exhibit. Patrick’s Day party for the first time in 20 years. Fred Ryan, the publisher of the Washington Post, called off his annual St. An Episcopalian church in tony Georgetown told its flock to stay home after the pastor fell ill with the disease many prominent D.C. So did a wealthy donor who attended the Conservative Political Action Conference at the end of February, leading several Republican lawmakers who came into contact with the infected attendee to quarantine themselves. Five people who attended the AIPAC conference in early March have now tested positive for the virus. The virus has already hit some key nodes of the power matrix. ![]() “I don’t think people want to be around a lot of other people.” “Everything’s really slowing down,” said Yousef al Otaiba, the ambassador for the United Arab Emirates, an influential player in the city’s diplomatic and social landscape. Henry James famously called Washington the “City of Conversation.” For the moment, it threatens to be the City of Hunkering Down. ![]() The mayor declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, and as the local number of confirmed cases has mounted, a wave of cancellations has swept the city’s power events. And, one VIP reception at a time, it‘s even hitting the circles of political and media elites who’ve spent their careers assuming the word “nonessential” doesn’t apply to them. But the anxiety gripping the rest of the country is percolating through the city-touching its workers, its children, its parents. ![]()
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