This Town

Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital

De: Mark Leibovich

Narrado por: Joe Barrett

One of the nation's most acclaimed journalists, the New York Times' Mark Leibovich, presents a blistering, penetrating, controversial--and often hysterical--look at Washington's incestuous "media industrial complex."

An inside look from a junkie who can't quit

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Have you ever had a friend who nurtured a vice to the level of art form? Maybe he's always got a story about the times he's gotten royally wasted -- the one where he passed out naked on the steps of the fraternity house with all of his body hair shaved off and a dozen penises drawn on him in Sharpie. Maybe she's the party animal who breathlessly tells you about the time she was tripping so hard she saw Jesus riding a unicorn while Bob Marley played a funky reggae rendition of "Ride of the Valkyries". Maybe he's the guy with a hundred stories of nearly getting shot, stabbed or pummeled by jealous lovers as he escaped from some late-night tryst with yet another pretty face. Whatever the misdeeds, they'll finish their story by shaking their head and saying, "I've gotta stop doing this" -- but you see that glint in their eyes, the grin they can't quite wipe off their face, and you know they love it way too much to give it up.

That's the feeling I get from listening to This Town.Mark Leibovich describes the antics of the DC crowd -- variously called "This Town," "The Club", "The Gang of Five Hundred", or most blandly, "The Establishment" -- with the same rueful glee as your friend with the unhealthy love of the bottle, the pill, or the conquest. Leibovich is self-aware enough to realize that his community is ethically bankrupt, outrageously out of touch with reality, and contemptibly self-involved ... but his Serious Face keeps slipping, and he can never muster the outrage that is an outsider's only rational response to his exposé. The most he can manage is to paint a picture, sardonically, of what DC people actually think about the events that surround them, when all of the spin and "messaging" are stripped away. The end result is plenty outrageous and disgusting without him even needing to layer on any moralizing commentary. Ironically, by presenting himself as a near-totally unapologetic insider to the world he uncovers, he ends up coming off as a lot more credible and authentic than the hordes of writers and pundits who wax holier-than-thou about the way business is done in Washington.

The Washington elite inhabit hypocrisy like a fish inhabits water, so surrounded by it that they are rarely even conscious of its existence. This astonishing cognitive dissonance is what Leibovich portrays the most vividly and effectively. It's not that these people are bad, at least not in the sense of being ill-intentioned; they're just so monumentally self-absorbed, so trapped in their bubble of self-congratulation and mutual admiration, that every aspect of their lives has become hollow and inauthentic. Leibovich shows how even the supremely well-intentioned get waylaid, co-opted and subverted by the Washington machine; the Obama people, fresh from the 2008 campaign with big plans about how they're going to "change the game in Washington", illustrate this especially well. Nobody inside the Beltway lost much sleep about the Obama Change Brigade, because they knew from the start what the Obamas didn't discover until too late: You don't change Washington. Washington changes you.

Special props go to the narrator for this production, Joe Barrett. He perfectly conveys the sardonic, self-aware tone of Leibovich's book, as well as the genuine pleasure that he feels in the company of these people whom we, the audience, are so ready to be disgusted by. It would have been easy to get the feel wrong on this book, but Barrett nails it.

Are you kidding, who are all these people ?

What made the experience of listening to This Town the most enjoyable?

It was quick. I did know a few of the names. List of who make or Gov't work?

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

What a bunch of phonies and back stabbing, self absorbed, .........."Party animals!"

What does Joe Barrett bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

His voice was easy to listen.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes. A sitting may include drive time. Once I started it was interesting.

I never wanted this book to end.

I laughed. I fumed. I lost a little of my will to live. Everything a political book should accomplish. This book is incredible.

Loved it

Who can resist a behind the scenes take on the cloisters of DC. It relieved me of my desire to meet several of them, but not by much if I’m honest.

Now a time capsule (re-read in 2024)

I read this book when it first came out and listened to it again in summer 2024 after completing the newly-released Wolves of K Street. The book is now a window in the past, but definitely an enlightening one. The politicians who were all old men when I was young (I’m 42 now) are mostly dead (though not Chris Dodd, who I thought was until I looked him up). Twitter was sort of new and Trump was just an eccentric birther. Times have changed, but the city really hasn’t, and this book provides an interesting window into what it was like “back then.”