Another thing about DC is everyone is a couple of degrees of separation from very important people, everybody gossips about very important things and people, and then that gossip solidifies into a kind of local lore. You know, the things that are important but somehow never quite make it onto cable news except as subtext, the information that only gets shared over drinks. Of course most of it is probably bullshit, or at least the emphasis is all wrong, but it gives everybody a sense that they are the ones who are truly in the know, that there are things mere mortals (other then the tens or hundreds of thousands of DC workers) can't know or comprehend.
I don't mean that all insider knowledge is bullshit, just that there are ways in which gossip gets transmuted into fact, and the things you know that other people supposedly don't generally seem more important than they are.
