The Stepford Capital

You vomited at reading about the Capitol Club. Now, dry heave at the subserviant female equivalent: The Madison.

One local news personality, said a Madison higher-up, "calls us trophy wives in training." She laughs, tucking a strawberry-blond lock behind her ear. "I would be the ultimate trophy wife!"

Of course, Madison women are keenly aware that trophy wives can have fun but not too much fun: No one wants his trophy too tarnished before they walk down the aisle.

All right! It's good the hear that we've finally caught up to Mississippi, circa 1910 or so.

What makes The Madison a big, fat target for anyone who isn’t a member is that it looks and feels like a relic of a faraway time and place — before Betty Friedan, Roe v. Wade, the 19th Amendment. There’s a curiously staid quality, a predictability, about going out on the town in the nation’s capital. In New York, everyone is looking for an experience; in Washington, they’re looking for a future; in Washington there’s a lack of edge.

And these are the people who have the run of the local bars. Don't ruffle too many feathers, ladies.