Historic Washington Cocktail Party Host Goddess Sally Quinn, the first columnist in Washington Post history to be fired for writing bad columns, has been spending some of her free time on the Twitter machine after finally busting it out of husband Ben Bradlee’s locked scotch cabinet and refilling its gas tank. MORE »

UHH… END OF AN ERA? LET’S GO WITH “END OF AN ERA”: Good heavens, the rumors of usurpation have been confirmed! A man “Broccoli” is eliminating the Washington Post’s most important writing this side of Dana Priest: “The Washington Post has decided to no longer run Sally Quinn’s ‘The Party’ column in the print edition of the paper, following an uproar after she used it to weigh in on a family spat last Friday.” She will now have to write for the damnable Internet, that dangerous mating ground for woolly-bullies! [Michael Calderone]

WICKED PENNILESS CHILDREN CONSIDER SILENCING DINNER PARTY HOST SALLY QUINN: Certain vulgarians at the Washington Post who call themselves “executives” are allegedly considering — brace yourself, America! — eliminating Dame Sally Quinn’s weekly column about her personal life, and the social functions she may or may not attend. Apparently it’s been very shitty recently. [Washington City Paper via The Awl]

BREAKING: Wacky old Sally Quinn has two weddings to attend on the same day, due to an inadvertent scheduling problem, and may only be able to attend one. [Washington Post]

If you read ONLY ONE important (for national security) Washington Post column today, let it be this divine half-drunk prattling from Queen and Spokeswoman of the Washington Premier Socialite Village Lawn Party Country Club, Sally Quinn. Good Heavens! Amazing how offended the comfortably rich and connected 150-year landed gentry of this temporal, diamond-shaped government office park get when three NINNIES briefly puncture their esteemed bubble. MORE »

Don Rumsfeld is the shrewdest person in Washington.

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* Reliable Source: Bush will divert Air Force One today to vote in the Texas primary. . . David Boies‘ wife chartered two planes to bring 50 of his best friends –including Tom Brokaw, Charlie Rose, Ted Olsen, Walter Isaacson, Tom Friedman, Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn and Margaret Carlson– to Vegas for his surprise 65th birthday party. . . Alan Greenspan turned 80 yesterday; book advance could reach $8m. . . George Stephanopoulos gets manicures. . . Jenna Bush dined at the Capital Grille on Saturday. . . Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) attended the Oscars. . . Martin Sheen seen praying at St. Stephen’s Church. [WP]
* Under the Dome: Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) has cast 17,532 roll-call votes. [The Hill]
* Lloyd Grove’s Lowdown: Katie Holmes‘ character in “Thank You for Smoking” was inspired by Maureen Dowd. [NYDN]

We know know what Sally Quinn does in those hours when she’s not being the fabulous semi-employed spouse of Ben Bradlee: She’s about two Reynold’s Wrap-tubes short of being a member in the tin foil hat brigade, an ultra-prepared, paranoid (”Federal emergency authorities ‘not only lie, they don’t tell the truth.’”) urban survivalist who always carries a “N95 particle mask” and a jar of peanut butter. (Kinky.) On Monday, apparently between Chalabi-stalking appointments, she gave a talk to the Citizen’s Association of Georgetown, and she made it clear the lengths to which she’ll go to ensure her household is adequately prepared: “[S]he’d tried putting an N95 on Sparky, her now-deceased Shih Tzu, but it didn’t work.” We’re sure she’ll get right on a solution. Meanwhile, one quibble: Quinn has designated her laundry room as emergency shelter because it’s “easy to seal off.” However, “her food supply is heavy on the beans, ‘because they’re nutritious.’” No doubt, but sealing off a room full of people eating mostly beans? Maybe that’s what the masks are for. MORE »

Yesterday, we discovered that the District’s drunk driving law allows arrests for driving even after just one drink. And we know this law’s disastrous unintended consequence: It has prompted a wistfully superior essay from Washington’s most famous former hostess, Sally Quinn. We suspect she left a fill-in-the-blank form for them on her desk when she left the Post. Hark, let us revisit her golden years:

There would be martinis and Dubonnet at cocktail time. Dinner would begin with terrapin soup and sherry, then move on to the turbot and a sincere Sancerre. Next would come the beef Wellington, accompanied by a decent Mouton Rothschild. We would stay with the red wine through the salad and cheese course, and naturally crepes suzette would require Dom Perignon. After dinner, when the gentlemen retired to the library and the ladies upstairs with the hostess, the postprandial liqueurs would be served.

Quinn may be nostalgic for those days, we just feel mildly queasy about them. Cost-cutting cheese plates and Australian wine never sounded so good. One thing, however, hasn’t changed: “How do you think people get through these parties anyway? It’s not by drinking Diet Coke.” — WONKETTE MORE »