Which was (once) attached to the White House.
The Dan Quayle Reading Room here at Stately Blaska Manor holds a most wonderful coffee table book, The White House; an illustrated history.” Published in 2003 “in cooperation with the White House Historical Assn.” Many photos, fold-outs, cutaway schematics. Pictures of John-John peering out from under JFK’s Resolute Desk; painting of Lincoln’s reception for U.S. Grant in the East Room. — The East Room of the White House, not the East Wing.
Among the book’s 144 pages, seven are devoted to the West Wing, which holds the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room. Teddy Roosevelt built it in 1902. Needed the living space back in the main house, given his six children. It was his successor, William Taft, who built the Oval Office (since relocated). Given his girth, he needed the space, also.
The single page devoted to the East Wing describes it as “an important entrance to the White House.” Now that is damning by faint praise! TR built it the same year “as a formal entry for social occasions.” TR’s fifth cousin redid the thing during WW2, adding a movie theater, offices, and (pessimistically) a bomb shelter.
Hardly the “123-year-old symbol of American history” that Maureen Dowd describes in the Sunday New York Times. Hellz bellz, Martin Sheen played the President in West Wing, not “East Wing.”
More ‘heartbreaking’ — all that gold gilt
The Left is in another of its periodic dithers! Representative is the lament of Patti Davis, who never sang for her father, Ronald Reagan:
The images we’ve now all seen of the East Wing being demolished are heartbreaking. … It was where Eleanor Roosevelt walked. It was where Jacqueline Kennedy planned the Rose Garden.
Praise so faint dogs can’t hear it! Eleanor Roosevelt walked all over the White House (and all over her husband! 😜) It ain’t the East Room where Lincoln and JFK lay in state nor the State Dining Room where her father toasted Queen Elizabeth or the Oval Office where JFK told the nation that Russia was pointing missiles at us from Cuba.
Blaska’s Bottom Lines: The demolition of the heretofore little known East Wing is one of those pop-up cultural thunderstorms, momentarily intense, quickly gone. Symbolizes Trump in the China shop, upsetting norms, defying tradition, setting the agenda without asking Nancy Pelosi for permission.
Many of the same Karens are triggered that Trump hasn’t dotted his T’s or crossed his i‘s before blasting out of the water the Venezuelan drug lord’s boatloads of illegal coke. Grudging admiration from free thinkers like Bill Maher, marveled that he has to get approval from a dozen agencies before he can put up a bird feeder on his California patio. The rest of us? Meh.
Granted, Donald Trump has abysmal taste. JFK invited Pablo Casals for a cello concert. The current occupant bops to The Village People. The President makes Liberace look Amish. Trump’s new banqueting hall is like everything he does — seating 999, too much!
16 responses to “Left wing laments the East Wing”
To paraphrase John Winger:
The East Wing’s gonna be demolished , and you’re gonna say, “Oh, I’ve been enthralled with it for years, and I think it’s fabulous.”
Again this is the case of who is person in office at the time. Fill in any dem potus name and media would be fawning all over this project. The only thing that would be different is a democrat would ask for 5 billion dollars and it would take 10 years to build and they would ask for more money. Who gives a crap, it aint the people’s house as its been called many times. As far as music tastes go, who gives a crap. Everyone likes what they like. Move on to the next fake outrage. From what i have heard there is also massive renovations happening to the ancient bomb shelter as well which were probably needed as well.
Gold gilt?
Kings and Palaces have always fascinated the liberals until now.
And when it’s completed in “29 Trump can use it during his 3rd term.
Funded by bribes. Built by a guy who thinks magnets don’t work in water.
If you want to call them bribes, at least they are coming from American citizens not the CCP/Hunter group.
300 million for this white elephant, 175 million for Noem’s jets, Dementia Don wants 230 million from the DOJ, but the poor can’t get their food benefits. Then you wonder why Zohan is winning.
Mamdani is winning because leftists are notorious for doubling down on stupid. They continue to vote for candidates who espouse failed, dangerous, and unpopular policies thinking that somehow it’ll be different this time.
sounds like trump voters. Rogan thinks trump is off the rails. 5 Repubs just told Vance to stick it and shot down some of Donny’s tariffs. the end is near.
Mamdani is off the rails. Thinks socialism works. Thinks big businesses will stay in New York after he taxes the hell out of them. Thinks law enforcement is bluffing to do the same. Thinks terrorists deserve sympathy. Thinks free stuff will fix all the problems that years of leftist leadership has plagued New York with. Go ahead and support him if it makes you feel better. His lunacy and failure in America’s biggest city will be more ammo for Republicans in coming elections.
I wonder what the media of 1902 had to say about TR’s East Wing, which by the standards of the day was as opulent as the one Trump has planned. I suspect they staged their own hissy-fit, every bit as indignant as the one we’re being subjected to today. I also suspect it was paid for by the American public, not by private donors. Of course, the left wants its gullible minions to believe that part of the original (i.e., 1800) house is being demolished, to be replaced by an ersatz Mar-a-Lago. It’s worth remembering that the folk who are currently in a swoon about the desecration of an historic site are the same ones who, not long ago, urged their followers to pull down every statue in sight, including, in the case of Madison, one erected to the memory of a Civil War hero.
When we have lost Dave Blaska about the needed process for how matters such as the historic East Wing are handled or witness a cavalier attitude with a quip about Nancy Pelosi, (as if red meat must be tossed to that base with each issue), we can then better judge the extent that the nation has truly lost its way. Its reasoning and common sense.
Again, what are you talking about Blaska? Trump had Andrea Bocelli at the White House a few weeks ago and was blasting one of his songs over the White House loud speakers. Or do you not like blind Italian singers?
Hey, what do you think about the new conservative Japanese prime minister watching baseball with Trump or the South Korean band playing YMCA??
Whatever you think, Trump is respected on the world stage, when our last truly dementia patient President was auto penning and couldn’t open an umbrella on the Tokyo tarmac.
Oh, and Miss Vicki in the Arctic Frost investigation list for associating with Troupis?? Back in the day, you would never hear the end of it with Scott Walker acolytes being investigated and woken up at 4 am with bullhorns.
I know, I know, it’s the unacceptable conspiracy theory that deserves to be punished on this blogge…
The debatably historic nature of the East wing isn’t what bears being upset about, it’s the hypocrisy of spending $300 million tax payer dollars on a vanity project while simultaneously claiming that he can’t tap emergency funding to feed the poor because the USDA issued a sternly worded opinion about it.
Correction, I forgot the ballroom is being funded by “donors”, but the point remains the same. Redirect the funds if they needy mean so much to him.