A developing wave of revulsion.

David Carr (in the NYT) reports, amusingly, on the disgust New Yorkers are feeling about the approaching Republican conventioneers. The best quote is from The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash:

They can say that they won't even know we are here, but they will. We will plunk down our garment bags in their hopelessly trendy hotels, standing out like Good Humor men in our summer-weight khaki suits while all those hipster squirrels scramble for our tips. ... They needn't worry. The contempt is mutual."

I also liked this, from Details editor Daniel Peres:

I don't want to see a lot of bad Men's Warehouse suits and a lot of badly parted hair walking around my neighborhood. All Republicans part their hair the same way.

Note the assumption that all Republicans are not only repulsive, but male. Or do Republican women have Trent Lott hair too?

The article also contains an interesting comparison between the way power operates in in New York and in Washington, which is connected to the feelings of mutual contempt. The theory is that Washington power is all about what position of power you hold, but New York power is less "hierarchical" and more "dispersed": In New York, you can be powerful through physical beauty or controlling access to a trendy place. The notion seems to be that people who have succeeded playing one city's power game find it quite unsettling to share physical space with the set of powerful persons produced by the other city's game.