Sally Quinn
Sally Sterling Quinn (born January 7, 1941, Savannah, Georgia), an American author and journalist. She is also considered one of the arbiters of society and mainstream opinion in Washington, D.C.
Personal
Quinn was the daughter of Lt. Gen. William Wilson "Buffalo Bill" Quinn (November 1, 1907-September 11, 2000) and army wife Bette W. Quinn (January 27, 1918-September 26, 2004). Both are buried at Arlington National Cemetery. The two also had two other children, Quinn's younger sister Donna and younger brother William Jr.
Lt. Gen. Quinn was an intelligence officer and played a key role in the transition of the Unites States's intelligence service from the Office of Strategic Services to the Central Intelligence Agency. From 1964 to 1966 he was commander of the 7th Army in Germany.
For many years the Quinns maintained a residence on Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., where Bette Quinn was known for her cooking and entertaining. Sally Quinn reports in CC Goldwater's HBO film Mr. Conservative that Senator Barry Goldwater spent much time with the Quinns, often staying at their home, after his wife decided to remain in Arizona instead of coming out to D.C. while Congress was in session.
Quinn graduated from Smith College in 1963.
Quinn is married to Benjamin C. Bradlee, the former editor of the Washington Post, her former boss, and twenty-five years older than her. In her 1986 novel Regrets Only, Quinn gave her middle name to the book's heroine Alison Sterling, a beautiful and brilliant reporter who conducts an affair with a very married bureau chief at a national newsweekly magazine.
Quinn's only child, with Bradlee, is known as Quinn. Quinn had her son in 1982 at age 41, the child once had difficulties with mental and physical growth. The Quinns have acknowledged that he was born with a heart defect, and Quinn wrote of her son's learning problems and attendance at special schools in her 2006 article "What My Son Taught Me About God."
Sally Quinn's great-great-great-grandfather was William Williams, who was a signer of The Declaration of Independence.[citation needed] Quinn is also a third cousin, many times removed, of Mayflower passenger William Brewster.[citation needed]
Residences
East Hampton
In 1979, the Bradlee-Quinn family purchased Grey Gardens, the East Hampton mansion shown in the 1975 film of the same name. The two only stay there in the month of August. During the rest of the year it is lived in by Frances Hayward, also known as Frances Singer-Hayward. Hayward is believed to be a member of the Singer family that founded the Singer Sewing Machine Company and is married to Sir Jack Hayward, a member of one of the founding families of Freeport, Bahamas.
Maryland
Quinn's main country estate is Porto Bello Farm, which sits on the St. Mary's River in Drayden, Maryland. As reported by the Washingtonian magazine, Quinn has built a circular labyrinth there out of concrete. She finds walking the labyrinth contributes to her religious and spiritual contemplation.
Washington, D.C.
Quinn and her husband live in the historic Laird-Dunlop House, in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C.
Career
Newspaper journalism
Quinn began as a reporter for the Washington Post with very little experience, but soon demonstrated a talent for drawing out the subjects of her interviews and profiles. Henry Kissinger said, "[Post reporter] Maxine Cheshire makes you want to commit murder. Sally Quinn makes you want to commit suicide." A notable incident of her career was her claim that Zbigniew Brzezinski, then the National Security Adviser, jokingly opened his fly in front of a reporter, a claim that the Post retracted the following day [1].
Television journalism
In August 1973, Quinn tried her hand at television, joining CBS News reporter Hughes Rudd as co-anchors of the CBS Morning News.[2] The show's anchoring team was its first disaster since debuting in 1963 -- ninety minutes before her television debut on August 6, 1973, Quinn, who never reported for television before, collapsed while trying to fight the flu. The next day, she was forced to anchor solo when Rudd's mother died. Quinn's ad libs during the show's first week also tended toward the inappropriate -- on one episode, following a report on the children of California migrant farm workers, she quipped that child labor "was how I felt when my mother and father made me clean up my room." Quinn left the CBS Morning News after the February 1, 1974 telecast.
Other
Quinn had a cameo role in Born Yesterday, the 1993 remake of the 1950 romantic comedy.
Controversies
Bill Clinton
Quinn was critical of President Bill Clinton during the impeachment trial, stating that he had "fouled the nest," much to Clinton's outrage. Quinn had a long-standing animus for the Clintons, possibly due to a perceived snub by First Lady Hillary Clinton, who declined a party invitation from Quinn [3]. Regarding Whitewater independent counsel Ken Starr, she wrote[4]: "Similarly, independent counsel Ken Starr is not seen by many Washington insiders as an out-of-control prudish crusader. Starr is a Washington insider, too. He has lived and worked here for years. He had a reputation as a fair and honest judge. He has many friends in both parties. Their wives are friendly with one another and their children go to the same schools." Starr had won the gratitude of Quinn's husband Ben Bradlee in 1987, as an Appeals Court judge, by dismissing a $2 million libel suit against the Washington Post [5].
Barack Obama
In early May 2007, liberal Web sites and commentators were critical of Quinn for an extensive op-ed piece published in the Washington Post in which she complimented herself at length for not noticing the color of his skin: "I realized that when I look at him, I don't see a person of color. I see a really smart, appealing, thoughtful person." She also expressed a lack of knowledge about his staff, despite the fact that his campaign's chief political advisor was David Axelrod and the campaign had many other experienced staffers. Quinn's comments were taken as a dismissal by one of the grandees of elite Washington political society.
Bibliography
- Quinn, Sally. "The Party: A Guide To Adventurous Entertaining." New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.
- Quinn, Sally. "We're Going To Make You a Star." New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975.
References
- ^ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,912611,00.html
- ^ The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television, by Wesley Hyatt (Billboard Books, 1997)
- ^ http://www.salon.com/media/1998/03/09media2.html
- ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/quinn110298.htm
- ^ http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/1998/9812.gitlin.obsession.html
External links
- Sally Quinn at IMDb