Club kids
Yeas & Nays first reported in July that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was shooting to become a member of the Metropolitan Club.
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But this could be a case of — to paraphrase Rummy’s famous line — “You go into Washington society with the club you have, not the club you want.”
Yes, Rummy has become a member … of the University Club, Yeas & Nays has learned. His application was sponsored by former University Club President and current American Beverage Association President Susan Neely, and seconded by former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
The 16th Street club calls itself “one of the premier private city clubs in the country,” but there’s a healthy rivalry among three of D.C.’s top clubs — University, Metropolitan and the Cosmos Club. This, of course, naturally leads to some stereotypes. In 2003, Charles Pierce wrote in the Boston Globe, “There’s an old Washington joke about various clubs around town:At the University Club, you need money and no brains, at the Cosmos Club, you need brains and no money, and at the Metropolitan Club, you don’t need either one.” (To be fair: Each club has its own rearrangement of that joke).
No doubt that Rummy’s detractors will savor the “no brains” analogy.
