One measure of the new Washington trendiness, at least for inauguration week, has been the number of celebrities now making reservations at places like Café Milano.
Another barometer may be the number of A-Listers who couldn’t get into a D.C. house party.
On Saturday night, Maureen Dowd threw a rager at her Georgetown townhouse that grew so crowded that Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck, and Bruce Springsteen couldn’t get through the door. (One source heard that Hanks told Springsteen, who was cruising by with his wife Patti, not even to bother trying.)
The celebrities can take solace in the fact that even some of the lords of journalism, including NBC’s Tom Brokaw, Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth and Dowd’s own boss, Times executive editor Bill Keller, also failed to get beyond the foyer.
Keller, in particular, missed out. Awaiting him was a 60th birthday cake that Dowd had chilled the night before on her back porch (near a cardboard cutout of Obama, who watched over the guests with a pack of Marlboro Lights taped to his hand.) According to one source, members of the Times’ Washington bureau ate the cake the next day.
