So GOP Rep. Aaron Schock’s Downton Abbey-inspired office decor is the new Sen. John McCain’s Tire Swing, as WaPo’s Ben Terris reminds us.
She introduced herself as Annie Brahler, the interior decorator whose company is called Euro Trash. She guided me to Schock’s private office, revealing another dramatic red room. This one with a drippy crystal chandelier, a table propped up by two eagles, a bust of Abraham Lincoln and massive arrangements of pheasant feathers.
Then, my phone rang.
It was Schock’s communications director, Benjamin Cole.
“Are you taking pictures of the office?” he asked. “Who told you you could do that? . . . Okay, stay where you are. You’ve created a bit of a crisis in the office.”
A staff member then came and asked me to please delete the photos from my phone. So started a day of back-and-forths with a congressman’s office about interior design.
Only in This Town is one of the staunchest Tea Party twits in Congress a rock star with style.
Washington has always been more “Veep” than “House of Cards.”
Schock, 33, is one of the rising stars of the Republican Party. He’s young, has six-pack abs that landed him on the cover of Men’s Health and is a prodigious fundraiser. He’s also one of the most media-savvy members of Congress, with an Instagram feed that features him surfing, hiking across glaciers, tangoing on the streets of Buenos Aires and smiling next to duck-faced pop star Ariana Grande.
An office decorated in a unique way would hardly be surprising; it would just be another interesting fact about a congressman who has built a brand as not just another politician. So why was this a crisis?
“You’ve got a member [of Congress] willing to talk to you about other things,” Cole said on the phone. “Why sour it by rushing to write some gossipy piece?”
Forget it, Lord Crawley, it’s Washington.
And oh, the dancing around Schock. Must be where he got the abs. Huckleberry Graham could learn a thing or two from this guy.
JPL
As long as he paid for it out of his funds, I have no problem with it. It’s a tad over the top, though. Do you really need those feathers?
chopper
this story sounds oddly familiar…
chopper
“duck-faced”?
Lurking Canadian
What is it with the Tea Party and the abs? Brown, Ryan, Palin, this clown, Putin…”Send me to Congress. I look best in a Speedo!” “Give me the red phone. I once climbed a rock!”
Edited to me too: “duck-faced”? What the hell?
scav
There dared be photos of his office, his decore, withOUT his Schockiness in the foreground!? Bring on the Crisis team STAT Code Selfie-deficit! Unregulated brand-management about to go pre-critical!
Violet
@chopper:
Yep.
c u n d gulag
I’m sure that Huckleberry Graham will be a willing and able teacher to young Rep. six-pack abs.
And what ever he’s packin’ below them abs.
NTTAWWT!!!
karen marie
@JPL: Do you know how difficult it is to paint over bright red? he should be billed for that. At one time I painted my bathroom red like that. It was hideous – like walking into a bloody vagina. I can’t imagine having to work in rooms painted red. I would be screaming within two days.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@chopper: Look at the picture and tell me that’s not the most appropriate term for the weird kissyface thing the kids are doing in pictures these days.
She looks exactly like a motherfucking duck.
Marc
@scav: I think the problem, from his communications director’s perspective, was that the pictures will make it a little harder for Congressman Schock to dance around that thing he’s so adept at dancing around.
boatboy_srq
This, for someone who:
…sounds just awful.
And
… sounds a lot like a serious closet case doing his best to “pass” around his homo-hatin’ colleagues and terrified that he’ll be outed to the Beltway VSPs and to his constituents.
BTW the Wiki entry lists his religulous affiliation as “Conservative Baptist.” This is different from Southern Baptist, how, exactly?
Marc
Also, somebody needs to tell that communications director about the Streisand effect.
ThresherK
@Lurking Canadian: The Speedo company thanks you for capitalizing. Respect the brand.
Of course, picturing these poseurs in a Speedo, Tyr, Arena or Jantzen sorta makes me cringe.
Redshift
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Yes, it’s a term for the face she’s making, not a description of how she looks in general.
Bobby B.
“Revealed: Liberace’s Oval Office!”
Violet
@boatboy_srq:
No, that’s “terrified that he’ll be outed by the Beltway VSPs.”
CONGRATULATIONS!
@karen marie: Yeah. If you really want to do it right so it never bleeds (and it can for years afterwards) you gotta seal the red surfaces with shellac. Royal pain in the ass. I’ve worked with shellac, but most painters don’t even know what it is much less how to use it (PROTIP: explosively flammable, room must be ventilated).
@boatboy_srq: Bigger closets.
I kid. Well, I’m not, but that’s a weird one. Never heard of “Conservative Baptist”, sounds fucking awful.
Amir Khalid
Is the Representative really unaware of how his office was decorated? Didn’t his decorator show him what it would look like? Why is his staff acting so embarrassed? Were they unable to talk their boss out of approving a design they thought unsuitable?
boatboy_srq
@Violet: The VSPs aren’t clustered around the bar at Cobalt, nor downing pints at Town on Friday nights with the bears (unless Norquist goes incognito, and I don’t recall seeing him there). They may KNOW, but they probably lack PROOF. Unless some rentboy pipes up, or some quick person snaps a couple telling photos, the VSPs will likely not own up to anything.
The guy’s voting record is FSM-awful: he’s opposed to anything to the left of Franco, and he’s advocated for religulous exceptions to just about everything.
c u n d gulag
In my youth, I once had 6-pack abs.
As I’ve gotten older, my abs went from a 6-pack, to a case, to a half-keg – and now, a full keg!
I’m 57, single, and happy with my keg.
Of course, if I was looking to date, I might work to change that.
Nah!
Too much work.
boatboy_srq
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I can’t help thinking this is some “We’re just as wingnutty as the SBC: we just don’t want people to think we’re in the same camp as they are.”
Paul in KY
@CONGRATULATIONS!: That’s what it is generally called.
AxelFoley
@karen marie:
Wat?
Librarian
Of course there’s a picture of him “hiking across glaciers.” I’ll bet you anything that he’s a global warming denier, and supports every other environmentally destructive GOP policy there is.
boatboy_srq
@Librarian: Global warming denier, anti-Obama-anything, religulous-exception-promoter, etc etc. His voting record is FSM-awful.
catclub
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Well, the Southern Baptists got that way before the Civil War, when the northern Baptists decided that slavery was not so much of a Christian thing, and they (Southern Baptists) did not buy that at all, then. I think the Southern Baptists have gotten around to saying that slavery was a bad thing, but am not certain. You could still be right about Conservative Baptists.
catclub
@Amir Khalid:
I am always amused at the use of the word ‘staff’ in these discussions. In the discussion of Huckleberry Graham, someone posted that Graham lived with his long time chief of staff. I tittered.
So I have the maturity of a nine year old. sue me.
Gindy51
@Lurking Canadian: The last time the average teabagger saw their own abs was the late 50’s so maybe they are… oh hell I don’t know. I could care less what a person’s stomach looks like. I care more how their mind works.
Slaughter
@chopper: Perhaps it means this? “A facial expression utilized by attention-seeking teenage girls in which they push their lips outward and upward to give the appearance of large, pouty lips.”
But that adjective stopped me cold, too. I had to search for photos, and I didn’t see any matching that. Someone’s editor must have been asleep.
PurpleGirl
Haven’t tried to look at pictures yet, but that description of the Euro Trash design sounds like a brothel. It also sounds like what NYC designers once called “Bronx Renaissance”, a look that was popular with former Bronx residents who had moved to Westchester Cty.( I Goggled “Bronx Renaissance” and found only references to interior design companies.) Whatever, it sounds awful and hard to work in. Talk about wasting taxpayer money!
g
Conservative Baptist congressman with an office that looks like a brothel.
Which, now that I think of it, is totally appropriate.
raven
@catclub: My ex’s father was a “Northern Baptist” and they were nearly Unitarian.
Calouste
As someone posted on the other thread, Schock is this guy: http://americablog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/aaron-schock-white-house-clothes.jpg
Now the white trousers and the checkered pink shirt are one thing, but that combined with the baby-blue belt really broke my gaydar.
shortstop
Ever since we lost Joe Walsh, old Aaron has been the embarrassment of the Illinois delegation.
shortstop
@Calouste: That belt broke EVERYONE’s gaydar. But Aaron doesn’t want to talk about it. He just wants to vote against DODT, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, an amendment against actions contravening DOMA and pretty much every other piece of legislation boosting LGBT rights. He has a score of 0 from the HRC.
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: Picture. So many instantaneous responses, so few actually printable…
@g: Denial. It does flow through Teabagistan.
@raven: “Northern” and “Southern” Baptists are very different breeds. Northerns are generally economically conservative and socially moderate; Southerns are outwardly socially repressive (they’re freaks in private) and risking their Xtianity by their Mammon-worship. I spent four years with the SBC (undergrad): one of my classmates in the music conservatory got his degree by doing his voice professors, one of whom I later ran into in a gay bar; a department head made a pass at me in the middle of a final exam; I knew frat boys and sorority girls who used to double-date to hide who was with whom; and the freakdom abounded if you knew where to look. One frat got busted for something every year (apparently as an example to the others, though few took heed): drugs were the cause twice. I came out halfway through my time there: before I was not popular, respected, etc – and after I was suddenly accepted and believed to be dating two or three girls (simultaneously) on campus. Southerns are all about appearance. No clue what “Conservative” Baptists are, but chances are they are either SBCers that moved north or former SBCers for whom the SBC wasn’t sufficiently repressive. If Schock is representative, my money’s on the latter.
boatboy_srq
@shortstop: Sounds like a good candidate for outing [note to self: pack the camera for the next night out on Dupont Circle]
Mike in NC
This guy displays more appalling taste than Donald Trump.
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: The beauty of that getup is that he can tell his constituents he went to an ’80s party (and all of us will instantly recognize that as a Bronski Beat / Frankie Goes to Hollywood bump-and-grindfest) and they will all nod and smile – and breathe a sigh of relief.
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: @shortstop: @boatboy_srq: Photo makes me think of this.
boatboy_srq
grrr. one too many links in #40 and I’m in moderation. Help?
shortstop
@boatboy_srq: You can be round two.
jayboat
@Calouste:
Holy acid flashback, Batman.
That color combo would send laser pulsations through the cracks of the strongest closet door.
This type of behavior from an elected official is, to me, the absolute worst of humanity.
Such vicious denial- and with power that has real effects on the lives of others.
Yuck.
shortstop
@shortstop: (Sorry; that obviously shoulda been “vote against ENDING DODT…”)
Arclite
I was having a major Groundhog Day moment. Then I realized Zandar posted the same thing that Anne Laurie did a few hours earlier.
karen marie
@AxelFoley: Yes, it really was that bad.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@boatboy_srq: I suspect that may be a thesis length answer. And it may be quite a finer distinction than Orthodox v. Conservative Judaism.
boatboy_srq
@shortstop: That Gawker article was smarm. I want documentation (original JPGs, signed bar tabs, etc). Did you read the comments? “Nobody cares if you’re gay anymore” was the gist. Talk about getting it wrong. It’s not about who you are: it’s about being who you are and making d#mned sure nobody else gets to be who they are, even (especially?) when they’re exactly like you. Let’s see what his constituents say about a GOProuder who consistently votes against rights for LGBT people and then expects to be just hunky-dory out and about with his BF/FB du jour.
catclub
@shortstop:
Don’t Orc, Don’t Tell?
Tree With Water
I kind of dig the concept of fantasy offices for congress. Imagine walking into your senators office to be greeted by him/her dressed as a star fleet captain at the con of the USS Enterprise (Jerry Brown, if he were a senator). Ted Cruz could replicate the Alamo, with discreetly placed faux corpses of Mexican soldiers scattered under desks. The possibilities are endless..
opiejeanne
@karen marie: My dining room is painted dark red above the wainscoting, white below. It’s beautiful and a dramatic background color to display art. The room looks a bit Jamestown.
To paint it red in the first place you start with primer in battleship gray. Otherwise it will take six coats for the paint to look good.
opiejeanne
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Huh. Well, someone will have their work cut out for them in 20 years, if they don’t like my dining room, and odds are in this area they won’t. People here are color phobic. Most houses in the area are painted gray or beige, or sometimes a depressing gray-blue. A few rebels with yellow or white paint, but not many.
Deciding what piece goes where, after the addition was finished: https://flic.kr/p/jf5Vxj You can see that we don’t even have doorknobs for the French doors yet.
This is what we started with: https://flic.kr/p/gkt9Hr
opiejeanne
@boatboy_srq: Me too.
boatboy_srq
More dirt (from the article, but mined from the article by ThinkProgress):
This treads the line separating feature-not-bug GOTea expectations of “recognition and support” from its base and bribery/corruption. Ghastly boudoir décor? Interesting, if not exactly butch. Ghastly boudoir décor installed for free? Isn’t that special.
Tree With Water
@opiejeanne: Very nice contrast, great job. Amazing what a difference paint can make. What’s kind of funny is the one thing I would definitely change is your chandelier, and that’s only because I’ve never cottoned to them to begin with.
shortstop
@catclub: Ha! My brain, working today it is not.
Mike G
Is Stephen Colbert, still in his right-wing-asshole persona, decorating congressional offices now?
boatboy_srq
@Tree With Water: I would dearly love to be the next rep in Schock’s office. That’d be an instant exclusive for WaPo: the full before-and-after treatment, complete with respective budgets, ending with a tasteful redo to boot. I keep looking at the pics – and all that comes to mind is Priscilla, and Terence Stamp’s one-word comment on the hotel room in Broken Hill (uttered with the best Received Pronunciation sarcasm evah): “Subtle.”
@Mike G: Now you have me imagining a table propped up by ALL those objects. Need. More. Brain. Bleach.
Steeplejack
@boatboy_srq:
That song is great. I found myself slipping toward the dark side. Eek!
Renie
@opiejeanne: That dining room is GORGEOUS!! I love red on walls with white trim; I have a room that way and get a lot of compliments.
tones
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Maybe it means “White” as opposed to all of those “Liberal” baptists ?
huh.
boatboy_srq
@Steeplejack: The video is priceless, too. Especially in context.
delk
Is this the gay lobby they keep talking about?
Tree With Water
Tasteful reboot would be good. But I’d go a different route. Miniature trees, bamboo floors, lots of plants, a recyclying waterfall, big screen TV, kitchen, fully stocked bar & hookah pipes, and the cherry on top of the cake- a big Keep Out sign to hang on the front door.
opiejeanne
@Tree With Water: The new chandelier, the one in the red room, is not going away. I realize not everyone likes the same things, and I’m sorry you don’t care for it, but we like it.
The house is a Federalist box on the outside, sort of, and we flirted with that a bit inside the house.
opiejeanne
@Renie: I saw a family room and kitchen done that way when we were looking for a house, and it was so beautiful that when I found this color (which doesn’t show up very well in the photo) I was not afraid to use it. This is what the room looked like the year after we bought this house, and before we added onto it and the kitchen. The dark red shows up a little better here:
https://flic.kr/p/gksTy1
opiejeanne
@boatboy_srq: I hadn’t seen that before and I loved it.