On The Origins And Meaning Of The Term, “The Villagers”
Okay, a number of you — including my editor — have asked me to explain the meaning of the term, “The Villagers,” and where it came from. So here goes.
“The Village” and “The Villagers” are terms frequently used in the liberal blogosphere as a derisive epithet for the Beltway media and political elite. The term “Village” appears to be a reference to a famous 1998 article written for The Washington Post by D.C. society hostess and WaPo writer Sally Quinn, in which she explained the Beltway establishment’s outrage over Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Quinn wrote, without irony, that Establishment Washington — which she described as “the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it” — is “not unlike any other small community in the country.”
“They call the capital city their `town,’” Quinn wrote. Thanks to the Lewinsky mess, she added, “their town has been turned upside down.”
From this description of the Beltway the term “Village” was born. It is believed to have first been used in this fashion by Digby, though I have not yet confirmed this. It was popularized, and is still frequently used, by the blogger Duncan Black, a.k.a. Atrios, as well as other bloggers such as Jane Hamsher, Markos Moulitsas, Glenn Greenwald, and many others.
To these bloggers, Quinn’s description of Washington as a “town” gripped with prudish outrage over the behavior of the rude and common impostor Bill Clinton seemed to capture a larger truth about the Beltway. Thus, to the bloggers, the term “Villagers” refers to the Beltway elite and the kind of small-town insularity, prudishness, clubbiness, status anxiety and addiction to catty gossip that D.C.’s elites are prone to on occasion.
In political terms, the term “Villagers” denotes a kind of small-minded refusal to think outside an “acceptable” center-right consensus, and a refusal to acknowledge it when a majority of the American people take a view on a particular issue that is not in line with that center-right consensus. Thus, the “Villagers” include, in part, Democratic elected officials and consultants who insist that their party can’t succeed unless they ally their party with that center-right consensus; think-tankers who churn out position papers designed to prop up this elite consensus view; and elite pundits who insist that mainstream liberal views are radically leftist and insist on “bipartisanship” for its own sake, damn the consequences.
This elite consensus, in the view of the bloggers, represents this particular Village’s hidebound small-town values, which must be maintained at all costs to protect this elite’s status and interests.
So there you have it. That’s the best I can do. More on the term here.
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Update: A reader sends in Digby’s first known use of the term.
Update II: Digby emails to say that, yes, she did in fact coin the term.
“Quinn wrote, without irony”
I just startled the hell out of my cats with the burst of laughter this one produced.
I’d really love to see that center-right meme abolished in D.C.
Greg, do you think there’s any of the “we need to cut Obama down to size” dynamic going on in the DC press corps? I seems that way to me. Just curious as to your thoughts – and btw, we evil hippy bloggers consider the DC talking heads and columnists to be among the worst offenders of villager brain lock.
I’ll jump in on that definition:
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The Villagers would be the members of the social, political, and publishing/broadcasting Establishment who have hijacked the overarching national political and policy discourse in a profoundly destructive way based on faulty assumptions that have been fostered by an insular, narrow and privileged view of the world.
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You have your Village Elite, whom I call the Inbreds. They would be the Quinns and the Bradlees and the Broders and the Greenspan-Mitchells and the Hiatts and the Kristols and the Kagens. Note that the most visible Villagers (to Outsiders) are in publishing/broadcasting, but the actual Village community is inclusive of all the intermarried and otherwise interconnected players, most of whom are unknown or barely known to those of us looking through the knothole. Inbred because you have pub/broadcast people married to political operatives and lobbyists and politicians’ spouses being broadcasting people or lobbyists, and so on.Then you have your Village hangers-on, the village gossips, the political operatives, the crackpot columnists, which are sometimes one and the same. Exactly where particular people are on the unholy ladder is oftentimes debatable.
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Don’t forget Broderism!
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Broderism: The idea that everyone should hold the very same views that David Broder holds because he is the Royal Keeper of the Beliefs and Attitudes of the American People, and therefore any debate or disagreement about those views is abhorrent and futile and unAmerican. High Broderism is simply Broderism with the hanky and the smelling salts.
I once emailed with Digby about the origins of the term “The Village.” She said she first used it in this post, titled “The Village” from July 6, 2007.
thanks Matt, added it. good find
James wins the inernets
this was great greg, now I really get it.
I think it is more than cutting Obama down to size, since the Village was happy to let Bush and his crew lie through their teeth no?
yes have to second that–James that was masterful.
“the kind of small-town insularity, prudishness, clubbiness, status anxiety and addiction to catty gossip that D.C.’s elites are prone to on occasion.”
Only “on occasion”?
james … that was awesome.
As a bit of pre-McCain type of maverick (i.e. not fake), I’ve long used the term “Versailles” instead, as it captures the out-of-touch social insularity, but adds a level of historical-political context. This has aspects both substantive and stylistic. On the side of substance, just as the original Versailles was indifferent, if not downright hostile to the welfare of France, the same can be said of Versailles today. Stylistically, Sally Quinn would be out of place in your average village. Not so Versailles.
We all need to guard against becoming Villagers. It’s easy to get sucked into our own trivial little worlds and start to disregard unconventional wisdom.
ifo, this may answer your question: Right on cue, the White House press awakens from its Bush slumber
“elite pundits who insist that mainstream liberal views are radically leftist”
Also, who insist that mainstream views– ie, dislike and distrust of Pres. Bush, support for “socialized medicine,” support for immigration amnesty– which most Americans share, are radically leftist.
I also remember a more telling story written by a Villager that without a trace of irony or self-awareness that the trouble with the Clintons started when they stopped inviting certain members to their cocktail parties.
It used to be that to report the news you had to be separate from the players. Now it seems that in order to get in a position to report the news, you must have recently played golf with the players.
To expand on James’s point “Inbred because you have pub/broadcast people married to political operatives and lobbyists and politicians’ spouses being broadcasting people or lobbyists, and so on.”, there also are inter-connections through homeowners’ associations, private schools, non-profit boards, and similar groups — furthermore, the Republicans in such groups require fealty to Republican policies & views in the political arena for inclusion and advancement in such private groups, analogous to Tom Delay’s “K Street Project”!
In my opinion, the classic High Broderism post:
http://lawandpolitics.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_archive.html#113108209613786936
Paul,
Bob Somerby has also used Versailles to similar purpose since 2007, but, oddly, never to describe Sally Quinn, though he has quoted from this article of hers several times.
DaleP
The term also brings to mind the Shyamalan movie, in which sage elders shut out reality and construct demented myths about the DFHs* living outside the Village to keep everyone in line.
* a topic for another post.
The term could also refer to the Village from “The Prisoner”, an isolated, high-security prison made up to look like a seaside holiday resort, and whose inmates are required to maintain the pretense that they’re just having a jolly fun vacation.
Great article, great replies.
Thanks in particular to Johnny Pez for mentioning the Village from “The Prisoner”. I love that resonance. For folks who haven’t seen those shows, you can catch the full series, along with a speeded-up 60-seconds-per-episode run, here: http://www.amctv.com/originals/the-prisoner-1960s-series/
The GOPs, and the Villages, still don’t get Obama. Above all, they can’t believe that he’s not as cynical and self-serving as they are.
Objection, your honor.
The origin of “the Village/Villagers” described above is only partially correct. The term actually comes from a statement by David Gergen that Sally Quinn quotes in the story cited, to wit:
“”We have our own set of village rules,” says David Gergen, editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, who worked for both the Reagan and Clinton White House. “*** did not violate those rules. The deep and searing violation took place when he not only lied to the country, but co-opted his friends and lied to them. That is one on which people choke.
“We all live together, we have a sense of community, there’s a small-town quality here. We all understand we do certain things, we make certain compromises. But when you have gone over the line, you won’t bring others into it. That is a cardinal rule of the village. You don’t foul the nest.”
Gergen was essentially trying to make the conventions of the denizens of the Palace of Versailles on the Potomac into a rather quaint and harmless matter that should bother no one in particular; villages are harmless, aren’t they? They may be backwards and obsessed with trivia, but that’s part of their charm, yes?
People revolt against palace cultures, they don’t revolt against villages.
This is why I think the village metaphor really needs to be put to rest.
It long ago outlived its usefulness and now it’s just inappropriate and silly.
I’m much more aligned with Rosenberg when it comes to the right metaphor to describe the ruling clique.
Versailles. Palace.
I always thought it was a reference to a Potemkin Village.
What Che pasa said. A village where the middle class begins at $250,000/year is a palace, and it is easier to be clear on people’s functions and behaviors if you analogize to monarchical examples. E.g., Dick Cheney was a Shogun, especially as you consider that the Emperor usually was allowed to believe that the Emperor did things of his own volition (when in reality the State only did significant things when the Shogun agreed).
Well I found it interesting that Greg’s editor had to ask. I mean it would seem to be the whole premise of “Who run’s government”, itself a house organ of the capital’s paper of record the Washington Post, that it knows what is going on not only within the Beltway but about it.
The insularity of the village we got, indeed it is at the core of the critique, but the lack of self-awareness among those who bill themselves as the most dialed-in of all, the kings and queens of the rolodexes is kind of stunning. Is there a possible world where David Broder doesn’t understand the meaning of the expression ‘High Broderism”? I am afraid there may be, and that we are trapped in it, or more precisely just outside it looking in.
Apropos of maybe nothing but did anyone else but me notice that when one of our own, who I once knew of as “that kid Ezra” got a day job at the Village Temple that he started taking weekends more or less off? I don’t mean that he is slacking, the guy had freaking 10 posts plus a tab dump up on Monday and a similar amount Friday, the kid is a content machine, but what kind of blogger simply shuts down in between? The blogosphere is 24/7 and the Village 8-5 (I guess to make room for the receptions where all the news is made anyway).