The Oval Office: Intolerably Taupe

The most powerful room in America gets new couches, rugs and baubles. And suddenly everyone’s a decorator. The NYT “Home” section featured a story this morning with the headline, “The Audacity of Taupe.” In it, HuffPost Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington was among those chosen to play decorator. She said it looked like something out of an Embassy Suites. She also said Malia’s seventh grade friends would find aspects of it “lame.”

But the NYT is just one publication in an endless line of outlets around the world weighing in. UK’s celebrity weekly rag Hello! Magazine remarked, “It seems the US president has opted for comfort over tradition…” Others who have little or no business discussing interior decorating have things to get off their chests. Among the armchair decorators are CNN senior political analyst David Gergen in the NYT piece and Lonnie Love, a comedian who went off on Obama’s Oval Office makeover last night in an attitudinal tirade on E!’s late-night “Chelsea Lately” show.

Gergen: Personally, I prefer a more regal office to the muted earth tones of the family den. But so what?

Love: It looks horrible. It looks like my first college apartment. We’re the most powerful nation in the world. it shouldn’t look like a den, and that’s what it looks like. Ok, I mean we need some POWER. Put some COLOR. The economy is BAD. We need some COLOR! Put some REDS, WHITES, BLUE!

Love is nothing if not patriotic. But Gergen? He should stick to analyzing POTUS’ and not office decor, even if he did responsibly stress, “I don’t care how he lives, I care how he leads.”

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