A Video That Makes A-List Washingtonians Look Like They Need Some Rest

Partly because CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer has always seemed a little strange and partly because a 13-minute video posted today by Politico Playbook makes some of VIP Washington—including Hillary Clinton and Bob Woodward— look almost deranged, the video weirdly brought to mind the movie Apocalypse Now.

The 13-minute video was part of a 25th anniversary celebration  of Cafe Milano, an Italian restaurant in DC’s upscale Georgetown neighborhood. The restaurant boasts about its VIP patrons, who in the video praise Cafe Milano’s power atmosphere and wonderful food. Critics have never been impressed. Tom Sietsema of the Washington Post says “No one goes there for the food, that’s for sure,” and a Washingtonian critic calls the food “overpriced and boring.”  That didn’t stop the Washington insiders from lavishing praise, sometimes with a wink, on Cafe Milano owner Franco Nucschese as “the most interesting man in the world.”

It’s a reach but watching Blitzer brought to mind Marlon Brando as the out-of-touch Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. The Coppola movie is set mostly in Vietnam with Martin Sheen, playing Captain Willard, sent up a river to “terminate with extreme prejudice” Kurtz, a Green Beret who has taken refuge in the Cambodian jungle and is using the natives to fight his own war.

Apocalypse Now was inspired by the Joseph Conrad novel, Heart of Darkness, and watching the Cafe Milano video might make those living outside Washington see the city teetering on the edge.

Update: A fellow journalist says that using Apocalypse Now to describe the behavior of elitist Washington at the Cafe Milano event was an overreach, that the better movie would have been Bonfire of the Vanities, based on the Tom Wolfe novel about arrogance, ambition, and greed in 1980s New York.

Here’s the Politico Playbook story with a link to the video:

Good Saturday morning. INSIDE CAFE MILANO’S 25TH ANNIVERSARY — Washington hotspot Cafe Milano celebrated its 25th anniversary last night with a massive fete that closed down an entire block in Georgetown. SPOTTED: Maureen Dowd chatting with NBA superstar Michael Jordan (pic: http://bit.ly/2ho31Jr ), Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Louise Linton, Maureen Scalia, Wolf and Lynn Blitzer, Sally Quinn, Mark and Sally Ein, Bob Johnson, Mayor Muriel Bowser, Susan Rice, Betsy Fischer Martin and Jonathan Martin, Buffy Cafritz, Vernon Jordan, Kathleen Biden …

… Ret. Gen. Jim Jones, Raul Fernandez, Hilary Rosen, Kelley McCormick, Tammy Haddad, Jack Evans, Coach Kathy Kemper, Carl Hulse, Anne Brady Perron, Rick Powell, Robyn Bash, Bret and Amy Baier, Steve Clemons, Patrick Steel, Fred Ryan, Kevin Cirilli, Ryan Williams, Howard Fineman, Teresa Davis, Greta Van Susteren and John Coale, Amb. Yousef Al Otaiba, Lyndon Boozer, Dr. Tony Fauci, Tim and Anita McBride, Connie Milstein, Melissa Sowerwine, and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

– The 13-min. tribute video to Franco Nuschese with a Wolf Blitzer intro — cameos by Hillary Clinton, Greta Van Susteren, Bob Woodward, Ellen Tauscher, Tucker Carlson, Bret Baier, Newt, Sally Quinn, Charlie Rose, Terry McAuliffe, Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Bush, Norah O’Donnell, Dave Chappelle, Bo Derek, and more: http://bit.ly/2i4Gxhx