News & Politics

Jeff Malet • October 11, 2012

The Georgetown Hoyas (3-2) and third string quarterback Stephen Skon could not keep up with the Brown Bears before a sellout homecoming crowd of over 3,000 at Multi-Sport Field. Spiro Theodhosi rushed for 142 yards and one touchdown and Patrick Donnelly threw for two scores as Brown pulled away from Georgetown 37-10. Georgetown’s first sting quarterback Isaiah Kempf has not yet been cleared for contact since suffering a concussion in the team’s first game, a victory against Davidson.

View photos of the game by clicking on the photo icons below. [gallery ids="101001,133247,133255,133262,133269,133276,133283,133290,133297,133305,133313,133321,133329,133337,133345,133237,133229,133219,133380,133373,133137,133367,133361,133146,133153,133161,133169,133178,133188,133195,133203,133210,133353" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney •

A night following the U.S. presidential debate, the Georgetown Business Association will host a panel-style candidate forum Oct. 4 for candidates vying for D.C.’s two contested At-Large seats on the District Council.

Mary Brooks Beatty, Michael A. Brown, David Grosso and Vincent Orange, will answer questions and make their case to the Georgetown residential and business community, Oct. 4, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church (3240 O St., N.W.).

The forum, moderated by Davis Kennedy, publisher-editor of the Current Newspapers, and co-sponsored by the Citizens Association of Georgetown, will include questions submitted by the community, the audience, and the event’s local media sponsors: the Georgetowner, the Georgetown Current, the Georgetown Dish and the Georgetown Patch.

Incumbent Michael A. Brown (Ward 4) was first elected in 2008 and currently serves as the District Council Chairman Pro-Tempore and as an at-large councilmember alongside D.C.’s other at-large councilman, Vincent Orange (Ward 5), who was elected in the April 2011 Special Election. Mary Brooks Beatty (Ward 6) and David Grosso (Ward 5) round out the field as challengers.

Event RSVPs should be forwarded to admin@otimwilliams.com for confirmed seating. [gallery ids="101000,133132,133121,133129" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Today, Oct. 1, the Times Picayune of New Orleans ceases publication as a daily newspaper and will instead publish three times during the week: Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. That makes New Orleans the largest metropolitan area in the United States without a daily newspaper.

More than that, though, the news was indicative of the precarious and fast-changing world of newspapers as a thinning force in the media world, as many dailies have gone out of business altogether, and as the Internet becomes an increasing source of news for many Americans, a fact that has also altered the way news are being presented on television.

Today’s news also comes on the heels of the announcement of the death of former New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, a reminder of a time when major newspapers were a significant force in our daily lives in terms of how we viewed and received the news, in terms of the discussion and presentation and reporting of American politics.

Sulzberger was a living symbol of the prime status that the New York Times—the paper of record—held in the publishing world when its reporters ranged the world, and its investigative pull and factual authority was rivaled only by the then rising Washington Post.

Sulzberger—a member of the powerful family which had led the Times since 1896—was the publisher for 30 years, during which the Times garnered 31 Pulitzer Prizes, led the way in publishing the Pentagon Papers. The Washington Post followed suit in that court battle and then found its own source of journalistic glory in its Watergate coverage, followed closely by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

During that time, it meant something to be a reporter in the world—American college graduates brushed off journalism schools all over the country, eager to follow in the footsteps of Woodward and Bernstein and legendary Times reporters like Johnny Apple or Tom Wicker. Books were written by publishers, reporters and writers that worked for national dailies, and books were written about them. “The Boys on the Boys” is as great a piece of work about election coverage of the 1960s and 1970s as you could hope to find, not to mention Gay Talese’s history of the Times, “The Kingdom and the Power.”

“Punch” became publisher at the age of 37. He not only increased circulation for the paper—when others were declining—but increased its size and its reach, making it more of a modern newspaper with a redesign that had a little something for everyone, something it still does You could make an argument that the Times cultural section, its book review, if not its sports department, were and remain second to none.

The new Times initiatives in popular culture, for instance, were not greeted with joy by some of the more hidebound members of the ruling powers at the paper, including the Sulzberger family itself, but it helped the Times become a powerful force nationally.

Sulzberger, who acquired his nickname of “Punch” by dint of his service in the United States Marines, was 86. He died after a long illness, according to news sources.

His son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., continues the tradition that a family member would always be at the helm of the paper. According to reports, he said that his father “was an absolutely fierce defender of the freedom of the press,” an accolade also deserved by his rival Katharine Graham at the Washington Post.

Hayley Markovich •

Dinaw Mengestu writer, novelist, teacher and Georgetown University graduate was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant,” the university announced Oct. 2. The grant of $500,000 comes with no strings attached.

“The MacArthur Fellowship is not only a recognition of their impressive past accomplishments but also, more importantly, an investment in their potential for the future. We believe in their creative instincts and hope the freedom the Fellowship provides will enable them to pursue unfettered their insights and ideas for the benefit of the world,” said MacArthur head Robert Gallucci of the awardees.

Mengestu, an Ethiopian native who immigrated to the United States at the age of two, received his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown College in 2000. He received a master’s degree in fine arts from Columbia University in 2005. He serves as Lannan Chair of Poetics of Georgetown University Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. He began teaching the course, “The Writer’s Perspective,” this fall. “Having the honor of coming back as the chair, more than anything, confirms the value of the program,” Mengestu said. “It was during my time as a Lannan fellow that I most profoundly felt that I had found a community of students who didn’t all necessarily want to be writers, but who were just as serious and engaged with literature as I was.”

His first two novels “The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears,” published in 2007, and “How to Read the Air,” published in 2010, are about the Ethiopian immigrant experience. His next novel “All Our Names” is being finished. His journalism and fiction have also appeared publications including Harper’s, Granta, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal.

Twenty-two others — including a pediatric neurosurgeon, a marine ecologist, an arts entrepreneur and a journalist — were awarded $500,000 grants in this year’s class.

Robert Devaney • October 10, 2012

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Korean religious leader, businessman and founder of the Unification Church died Sept. 3 in South Korea. He was 92. Moon considered himself the second coming of Jesus Christ, an idea directly heretical to mainstream Christianity.

In the popular mind, his Unification Church provoked images of mass marriages performed by Moon and his wife — the “True Parents” — and of young promoters who sold flowers at the airport or on the streets. And his Moonies, a word church members do not like, have been accused of being part of a religious cult.

His attendant business interests ranged widely from media and automobiles to supplying fresh fish to local restaurants, namely, sushi.

But the powerful ambitions and personality of Moon sought more: he wanted influence throughout the world, East to West. Where was the best place to set up his own version of a heaven-on-earth lobbying firm? In America. And the best place there? Of course, the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.

Beside his religious activities, the fiercely anti-communist Moon become known in the United States for strongly supporting then-enbattled President Richard Nixon, who later resigned. He led a huge rally at the National Mall, complete with fireworks, in the late 1970s. People here took notice, even as a few young Unification Church missionaries spoke casually with Georgetown University students in the lobby of Lauinger Library. (A new religion which unites the peoples and churches of Christianity can sound fresh, pure and worthy to a young mind.)

Moon’s church and businesses continued to grow, and he was ready to stake his claim as a major Washington influencer by establishing the Washington Times in 1982. While it was during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, it came along before many other popular media outlets which trumpeted conservative issues.

I got the opportunity to work as an editor at the Washington Times during the 1990s — the Bill Clinton years — working in special sections. We wrote and edited varied features, anything from travel, history, dining, real estate, jobs to specials on inaugurations, Martin Luther King, Jr., Apollo XI and World War II. Our bailiwick did not involve any ideological comments, specifically speaking, although we were aware of the preferences of the editor at the time, Wesley Pruden. Just being in the newsroom, it was instructive for a centrist Democrat like myself to learn a bit of the thinking from the conservative — and increasingly Republican — playbook.

Now, the Washington Times newsroom is off the beaten path, as far as media offices go. While the Washington Post — and the Washington Star (many staffers went to the Times when it folded) in its heyday — chose downtown D.C., the Times is in Northeast D.C. on New York Avenue between the National Arboretum and the train tracks.

There was that one day in the mid-90s when Rev. Moon, who would visit occasionally and go straight to the executive offices, walked around the voluminous newsroom meeting each editor and writer individually at his or her desk. One veteran writer, surprised at this never-before greeting, said that it was either really bad or really good. (The Times could wait for about another 15 years before things might go really bad.) Moon smiled as he joked about a top investigative reporter’s weight and poked him in the belly, saying he liked to eat as much fish as Moon liked to. At least, that’s what what the translator told the reporter who was not used to being messed with and who, I imagined, had to restrain himself as I also imagined steam coming out of his ears.

Like most newsroom creatures, Times employees were skeptical of authority and would make a quip as easily as those on 15th Street. They called their paper “little scrappy,” which did more with less and whose editors encouraged new hires to take chances. One said he was glad people believed in God, because he knew along with others that companies affiliated with the Unification Church had worked with News World Communications to spend more $1 billion over the years on the newspaper, which was one of the first to report regularly on religion, spirituality and, yes, God.

Of course, that other newspaper on 15th Street — “the OP” as Times editors said — looked down at Moon’s creation as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee vowed never to visit — until a birthday party for Arnaud de Borchgrave, a former editor-in-chief of the Times. Bradlee had worked with de Borchgrave at Newsweek in Europe and was happy to go to the New York Avenue newsroom as the Times printing presses produced a Times parody version for de Borchgrave’s party in the Arbor Ballroom; the banner headline aptly read: “A legend in his own mind.”

The Washington Times persevered in its quest to bring an alternative voice to the Washington and national scene, even as it sometimes beat the Post on local news stories. It was not afraid to make mistakes and offered many reporters who went on to bigger media groups a great start. Allow me to mention a few (mostly former) staffers who made the newspaper shine and had an impact for me, professionally and personally: Patrick Butters, Peter VanDevanter, Kevin Chaffee, Ann Geracimos, Tracy Woodward, Jim Brantley, Denise Barnes, John McCaslin, Lorraine Woellert, Tony Blankley, Deborah Simmons, Adrienne Washington, Cathryn Donohoe, Thom Loverro, Susan Ferrechio and Jerry Seper.

After the Times fell victim to squabbles within the Moon family, its staff and sections were cut a few years ago — and it looked like the end was near. But Moon did not want to lose face, as it were, and intervened two years ago and took the newspaper away from one of his sons who had controlled it. Today, the Times remains a strong conservative and journalistic voice amid the newer ones, such as the Washington Examiner, adding to a more dynamic media landscape. It is trying for a comeback. Whatever your opinion of its ideological bent, you know the Times kept D.C. from being a one-newspaper town. And you can thank its writers, editors, photographers, artists and pressmen — and a self-proclaimed messiah — for that bit of journalistic luck. [gallery ids="100969,130854" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner • October 9, 2012

Bar Dupont James Bond Party

October 5 | Free admission

“Bond, James Bond.” This week marks 50 years since Sean Connery first said this famous phrase in “Dr. No,” the first Bond film. Bar Dupont — 1500 New Hampshire Ave., N.W., is celebrating this anniversary with an all night movie party. Cocktails and songs from the films will be featured, and there will be a photo wall covered with Bond-related images. The event starts at 5 p.m. Admission is free; cocktails are $11 to $12.

D.C. Fine Art Photography Fair

October 6-7 | Free

The fair will feature more than 15 fine art photography galleries from all around the United States. On display will be a range of photos from the 19th century to modern images, all available for purchase. Saturday morning from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. hosts a panel discussion, “On Collecting Photography.” The fair will be held at 2801 16th St., N.W., accessible by the Columbia Heights metro and bus routes. Saturday, Oct. 6, noon to 7 p.m.; Sunday, Oct. 7, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. All events free to the public.
For more information: 202-986-0105

Redskins’ Lorenzo Alexander at Sprinkles Cupcakes

October 6 | Free

Washington Redskins linebacker Lorenzo Alexander will be making an appearance at Sprinkles Cupcakes in Georgetown from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Address:
Sprinkles Cupcakes, 3015 M St., N.W

Oktoberfest 2012

October 6, Noon to 7 p.m. | $25

The Capitol City Brewery in Arlington hosts its 13th Annual Mid-Atlanic Oktoberfest, featuring more than 50 breweries, giving four-ounce samples. The event will also host local food vendors, an authentic German band and Oktoberfest food. The event is $25 to sample beer, which includes a wristband, tasting glass and ten tickets; it is free for those who do not wish to drink. This is a 21+ with valid ID event, taps close at 6:00 p.m.
Address:
Shirlington Village, 4001 Campbell Avenue, Arlington, Va.

Columbia Heights Day Festival

October 6 | Free

The Sixth Annual Columbia Heights Day festival is this Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. It will boast live music, a petting zoo and a cupcake-eating contest. There will also be a yoga workshop starting at 10 a.m. and a food truck row. More than 60 local nonprofits and businesses will be there. The festival is at the Harriet Tubman Elementary Field, Kenyon St NW, between 11th and 13th Streets. A complete schedule of events can be found on www.columbiaheightsday.org.

Taste of D.C.

October 6-8, Noon to 7 p.m.| $10

More than 50 Capital Region restaurants and food trucks will be serving food at the festival, located on Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W, between 9th and 14th Streets. Restaurants will have four items for sale, with some items under $3. The festival will host a beer pavilion, serving more than 30 brews, wine and non-alcoholic beverages. There will be music, a chili-eating contest and family-friendly activities.

Gary Tischler • October 5, 2012

I wrote my first story—at the request of then publisher David Roffman—for the Georgetowner in 1980, a kind of long (what else is new), discursive piece on Ted Kennedy’s run for the presidency, a train wreck of monumental proportions, right up until the moment at the 1980 Democratic National Convention when the senator redeemed himself with a stirring speech that laid out his liberal principles like the party’s gift to the nation.

That means some 32 years have passed, and here I am, still writing, and here we are, in the middle of a particularly disheartening presidential campaign, where principles are as hard to find as a Republican moderate who admits to being one.

A lot has changed in the landscape and streetscape, the nightlife-scape, the business-scape of Georgetown, which remains what this publication is about. Needless to say, I have changed—ask my doctor or anybody who hasn’t seen me in a while. On occasions like these—anniversaries and the remembrance that goes with them—we tend to forget or note what’s going on in front of us. I don’t spend as much time in Georgetown as I might and like, but the differences are notable from my own observations, and from those that appear in our publication.

We talk a lot in Georgetown who was who which tends to identify the village—it’s a historic district after all, and maybe that fact alone, which makes it very difficult to dramatically change the physical look of homes and buildings and tends to make people talk a little too reverentially about his place. Let’s face it: yes, the young senator Kennedy (John Fitzgerald) lived here for a time, but he had not yet made the connection to Camelot, and the Georgetown University is a lodestone of history and training ground for diplomats and government leaders, and yes, it’s expensive to live here, in terms of real estate and a host of other things. Yes, Georgetown is a special place, it’s famous, historic, grand with some grandees who live or have lived here, but it hardly bears the stamp of elitism, as some people would still have it.

In fact, when I went to one of the CAG sponsored summer concerts at Volta Park this year, I was energized by the buzz there, the squeals of children, the bustle of young families, dogs running around, kids chasing kids, parents keeping a wary eye on them. I noticed the presence of new village leaders in the ranks of the Citizen Association, the realtors and merchants on site, people I did not know personally, but people full of enthusiasm. Gone, it seems are the rancorous old days of pitched cultural and political battles among CAG and ANC factions, and relations between commerce and residential interests seem good, although town and gown, not as much as one might like. All of this will change immediately when the Hoyas once again return to the NCAA basketball finals, as they did in the 1980s with John Thompson and Patrick Ewing.

The past is a great place to live in—the whole city is pockmarked with landmarks and statues and monuments and notes about where Abraham Lincoln walked, George Washington slept or had a beer on his way, where so and so fought duels and everyone remembers the face of Robert Frost at JFK’s inauguration. Every neighborhood in Washington has its share of historic places and moments and Georgetown has more than its share than most. In my neighborhood at Lanier Heights, long-time neighbors tell tales of the FBI running across rooftops chasing members of the SDS in the halcyon 1960s. So it goes.

Georgetown is a great place to live if you like to breathe in history deeply, if you have some means, if you appreciate the unique nature of the place. These days, it’s full of entrepreneurs and technology leaders. Mansions change hands, while history makers remain with us as ghosts or occupants of the rarefied grounds of Oak Hill Cemetery.

Our publication, which has changed hands only twice under three publishers is to me and those of us who, to put into the words of Captain Jean Luc Picard, make it so, like a tall chair, a vantage point where we watch, comment, write about, and document the village and city parades as they go by. The emphasis changes or becomes enlarged, but never diminished—the parade as always has presidents, neighbors, musicians, cultural mavens, grand dames, and plain dames, people who engineered startups with a little help and a lot of imagination. In Georgetown, you can see what small businesses are: they make things like fine clothes, leather jackets, cupcakes and pies, they sell things and they let you sit down for breakfast or dinner in a place they filled with their personalities, which is why we remember them. They are also: publishers and writers, editors, and the people who answer the phone and give you information or call you to twist your arm for advertisements. That would be us, since 1954, and we change, too but remain at your service.

In addition to our biweekly print publication, the Georgetowner has published an email newsletter every Monday and Thursday for almost two years. The newsletter has been a great source for up-to-date news and views on life in Georgetown and beyond. Sign up for the newsletter at www.georgetowner.com.