Pay2Play

Miss Manners could have told her -- you don't charge admission to your own party, you just don't!
It's become known as the Pay2Play scandal, that plan by the Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth to charge admission to a series of dinners in her home so that lobbyists could snuggle up to politicians and journalists.
Weymouth has now sort-of apologized, though her true regret seems to be only that she was just terribly, terribly misunderstood.
Reminds me of that joke "We've already established what you are, we're just haggling about the price."
I know nothing about Weymouth except what I have read in the last few days, but I suspect Weymouth wanted to be as influential in Washington as Katherine Graham was, without spending 30 years to do it. So she came up with the idea of hosting these parties as her quick way to become Washington's queen. It might have worked, too, if she hadn't also been trying to make money off them -- it wasn't only her own staff she was selling access too, but also all those supposedly influential politicians and Obama staffers who were going to be the Fearless Freep act that those lobbyists were paying to see.
I don't think the Washington Villagers will forgive this tackiness, and nobody will be coming over to the Weymouth house for dinner any time soon.