Washington City Paper: Contents for Apr. 9

Goodbye to All That
Has former New Republic starlet Ruth Shalit left Washington in the dust—or is it the other way around?

Cover Story

She is sorry, if you want to know.

Really. Sorry.

Sorry she plagiarized in the first place. Sorry she got nailed. And sorry she ended up in the same sentence as infamous fiction writer Stephen Glass. Ruth Shalit is mad as hell about that.

And you should know that the former ÆMD+ULØNew RepublicÆMD-ULØ writer is happy to have kissed off Washington and found a job as an account planner at a British-inflected ad agency in New York.

Really. Happy.

It's hard to remember that at a time when being a hot young writer in Washington was a big deal, Shalit was the biggest deal of all. As a featured writer in the opinion journal the New Republic beginning in 1993, she was a gorgeous stylist, with a gift for rendering the distant cousins of literary detail and policy nuance, often separated by nothing more than a comma. By the time she was 24, contracts, assignments, and bouquets were arriving steadily from some of the most reliable brand names in the business: the New York Times Magazine, GQ, and the New York Observer, among others. Her first real job out of college made her famous and well-compensated in a business not known for either.

Somewhere amidst all the buzz and sizzle, Shalit made the quintessentially '90s journey from media employee to media celebrity. One particularly perfervid profile of Shalit mentioned her in the same breath as Hemingway and E. B. White and suggested that we will all anxiously await her memoirs one day. That may still be true, but those memoirs will now include an operatic chapter about her early rise and fall in the city of Washington, D.C.... Continued

Issue of Apr. 9 - 15, 1999

News and Features

Goodbye to All That
Has former New Republic starlet Ruth Shalit left Washington in the dust—or is it the other way around?
Cover Story By David Carr
Control Freaks
The control board doesn't seem to be doing much of anything lately—including passing D.C. Council legislation.
Feature By Laura Lang
The Brawl Game
Youth baseball in D.C. is anything but a walk in the park.
The City By Elissa Silverman
Civilian Complaints
A board to investigate citizen complaints against the cops is finally on the books. Now someone needs to put it in the budget.
The City By Jason Cherkis
Questionnaire: Timothy Cooper
The City By Michael Schaffer
Citric Acid
The Mail By Constance R. Young
Rhymes and Reasoning
The Mail By Dean Blehert
Pain Without Gain
The Mail By Carol Casey

Columns

Signing Bonus
Cheap Seats By Dave McKenna
Glossy Charisma
City Desk By Jason CherkisLaura Lang, Nefretiti Makenta and Elissa Silverman
WILLIAMS' WIN-LOSE PREDICAMENT
Loose Lips By Erik Wemple

Eats

Irish I May, Irish I Might
Young & Hungry By Brett Anderson

Movies

Not So Deep South
Film Review By Mark Jenkins
Not Too Rich or Beautiful
Film Review By Arion Berger
Memory, Loss
Talking Pictures By Mark Jenkins

Music

Back on Top
Music Review By Sean Daly
Gospel Morning
Music Review By Christopher Porter
78 'til 79: The Lost Album
Music Review By Leonard Roberge
FM: Fantasma reMixes
Music Review By John Dugan
Always Never the Same
Music Review By Sean Daly
Dead Bees on a Cake
Music Review By Arion Berger
Voodoo Unto Others
Music Review By William Jelani Cobb
Miles Under Her Belt
Music Review By John Murph

Theater

Richard the Nix
Theater Review By Bob Mondello

Arts and Events

Walls Within Walls
The plays of Samuel Beckett helped set ex-con and director Rick Cluchey free—as free as he can be, anyway.
Arts By Amanda Fazzone
Each Age a Lens
Artifacts By Louis Jacobson
Lingua Mama
Artifacts By Dawn L. Hannaham
Please, Call Me...Anybody
Artifacts By Guy Raz
One More for the Road
Books By Sean Daly