Daily Inspiration Quote by Meg Greenfield

Washington runs on a perverse status economy: the bruise is the badge. Meg Greenfield’s line skewers a town where public shaming doesn’t always signal failure; it can certify relevance. The first clause flips the moral script. “Honor” and “disgraced” are supposed to cancel each other out, yet in D.C. they fuse, because attention is the real currency and scandal is one of its most reliable delivery systems.

The second sentence is the dagger: “you have to have been somebody to fall.” Greenfield isn’t romanticizing corruption so much as pointing to a structural truth about power. Most people in government never become visible enough to be “disgraced” in the first place. The fall requires height: proximity to decision-making, a reputation worth puncturing, an audience that cares. Disgrace becomes a kind of backhanded proof-of-life in a system that otherwise treats people as interchangeable staffers and anonymous bureaucrats.

As an editor steeped in political coverage, Greenfield is also needling the press-politics symbiosis. Washington’s narratives are built like theater: ascent, hubris, scandal, redemption tour. The machine needs villains and cautionary tales, and it rewards those who can survive the cycle with a higher profile than they started with. Subtext: don’t confuse notoriety with accountability. A culture that treats disgrace as an “honor” risks turning ethical collapse into a networking event, and public trust into collateral damage.