Have You Heard About This Real America? It’s Just Beyond the Borders of Washington, D.C.

This week, we celebrate a hero. Sam Youngman was a reporter in Washington, D.C., covering the White House and basking in all the perks of his high profile gig for several years. Then, after years of partying and a stint in rehab, he decided he was living an out-of-touch, morally bankrupt life. He moved back to his home state of Kentucky this year, where he’s a reporter for a local newspaper and the rent is considerably cheaper. He says he “can’t remember ever being this happy.” That’s fantastic to hear, and we wish him all the best.

But sobriety doesn’t appear to have weaned away his D.C. tendencies, and much of his recent Politico confessional—the thrust of it, even—is to declare himself morally superior to everyone else in D.C. for moving out to be amongst the Real Americans of Kentucky, who have Real Concerns. He lambasts the entire media-government complex that is Washington and offers up his unsolicited recommendation: “In short, get out of Washington. It’s messing you up more than you know.”

Map of Washington D.C. — Not real America./lacafferata

Youngman seemed to know perfectly well how much Washington was messing him up, though, when he decided to leave. His personal story makes sense, and in one of the stronger parts of his piece, he writes, “The saying there that indicates someone can be trusted as a source or Washington ‘friend’ is that he or she gets the joke. Without a drink (or seven) at the end of the work day, the joke just wasn’t funny to me anymore.”

Without getting “into it,” though, let me just say that I’m well aware of how substances can make the process of covering, or embedding, oneself in the cynicism of national politics go more smoothly. And it works until it doesn’t. Once that’s gone, you have to make adjustments: only going on Twitter when it’s absolutely necessary to find news or promote your own work, ignoring the White House Correspondents Dinner, building a social life outside of the political media, exercising, etc. Or moving away.

But not everyone in Washington, D.C. faces these “this is water” moments. There are plenty of douchebags in Washington who’ve never had a second thought about being douchebags. There are also many talented reporters, researchers, and government officials here who simply keep their head down, do good work, and go home. (A freakish number, actually.) I’ve been tempted by the idea of—even fantasized about—writing an essay much like Sam’s many times, but I stop myself because most people probably don’t have the same personality and experiences as me. I’d be projecting. Tediously. And Washington does need people to perform and report about the doings of the federal government, so it makes no sense to tell everyone to leave.

It’s a shame, too, that in an essay that tries to be so lucidly self-aware about the evils of D.C., Youngman misses out on the fact that his essay is one of the most “D.C.” things anyone could possibly write. Maybe he’s in Kentucky now, but the nation’s capital and all he’s inveighing against are still in him. There’s nothing that says “smarmy D.C. reporter” more than making a sojourn outside the Beltway, talking to a few people, and then bragging in Politico (!) that you’re more in touch with “real people.” Salt-of-the-earth Kentucky folks are teaching him about values and morals, he writes constantly, and condescendingly. He hopes to bring his simple new god-fearin’ traits back to the Capital of Evil one day, to preach the good word:

I might someday return to This Town. If I do, I hope it will be with this new mindset and that whatever self-destructive remnants of my ego remain buried deep in the limestone-enriched soil of the Bluegrass.

So . . . when, exactly, does he plan on burying this ego in the first place?