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ne evening in early April, around 50 of Washington’s wealthier citizens gathered in the garden of social eminence and cause celebrant Esther Coopersmith’s opulent Kalorama home. The occasion was a fundraiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Rep. John P. Murtha (D. Pa.), and Pennsylvania’s Lieutenant Governor Katherine Baker Knoll were there urging guests to dig deep into their pockets, but the candidate herself was campaigning in Pennsylvania. No matter, the New York Democratic senator had made personal appearances at two earlier Coopersmith fundraisers, and the hostess reckoned that at this most recent event she had raised around $50,000. Keeping the Clinton war chest replenished is Coopersmith’s current mission in life. The widening concern that Clinton’s stubborn refusal to bow out in favor of Barack Obama is doing nothing more than undermining the party’s chances of victory in November is a non-starter chez Coopersmith. “We go all over the world talking about democracy and the importance of voting; yet Hillary’s opponents want the primary elections closed,” she says. “How can we in all conscience talk about democracy abroad
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if we shut off the voting rights of millions of people? I think Hillary’s the most capable, competent person, and she’s going to make a wonderful president.” Meanwhile, across town almost contemporaneously at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, a large presence of wealthy Washingtonians who see things differently had paid $2,300 or $1,000 to thrill to Barack Obama’s verbal pirouettes. The choice of venue may have been intricately symbolic, because the conventional political wisdom is still that women tend to favor Hillary Clinton, and the museum by definition deals with exclusion. It celebrates the work of women painters and sculptors, many of whom deserve to be in mainstream museums, but are not. Elsewhere in the District, well-heeled Republicans gathered in a private residence and Uruguayan Ambassador Carlos Albert Gianelli and his family were forced to flee during military coups. Mosaic Foundation will especially miss Nermin. Argentina’s new Ambassador, |
Hector Timerman, is a human rights advocate and former newspaper publisher whose father endured brutal imprisonment at the hands of the junta. Timerman now fills the chair of the ambassador he once openly opposed during Argentina’s military dictatorship. Egypt’s Nabil and Nermin Fahmy expect to leave by summer’s end.
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