Media Elite Meet in Secret with Administration Figures

The Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz has broken a story about cozy, regularly-scheduled dinner meetings at the Watergate hosted by the owner of the The Atlantic Monthly, David Bradley, between top name journalists and Washington insiders.

The mega-secret, highly-prized invitations to knock around with fellow media types started a little over a year ago and have included such Washington insiders as Obama COS Rahm Emmanuel, General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt, Karl Rove, Gen. David Petraeus, White House economic adviser Larry Summers, former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner,Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Jordan's King Abdullah II among others. According to Kurtz, some of the journo luminiaries that have received an invitation:

Among those in regular attendance are David Brooks and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gene Robinson and Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post, NBC's David Gregory, ABC's George Stephanopoulos, PBS's Gwen Ifill, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum, former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson and staffers from Bradley's Atlantic and National Journal, including Ron Brownstein, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch.

According to Kurtz's sources, Rahm Emmanuel likens these meetings to "...a lot like a Jewish family dinner."

Did Mr. Kurtz attend? Mr. Kurtz graciously returned my call where I asked him if he was jealous if not invited. His response, "I have not the slightest twinge of envy...I have a life", were about what I would have expected from the media critic. It's actually good to know the critic is not partying with those he criticizes.

Are cozy get-togethers anything new in DC? Hell, no, but until yesterday, this one was the best-kept secret of them all.