Oval Office rug gets history wrong

Washington post ^ | September 4, 2010 | Jamie Stiehm

[COUNTrecount]

A mistake has been made in the Oval Office makeover that goes beyond the beige.

President Obama's new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King.

Except it's not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.

For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama. Unless you're fascinated by antebellum American reformers, you may not know of the lyrically gifted Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist thinker who foresaw the end of slavery, though he did not live to see emancipation. He died at age 49 in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War

[COUNTrecount]

Bubba's Oval Office, sink not included.

[yldstrk]

Yeah boy to no. 5

[MrBambaLaMamba]

All this criticism is RACIST!!!!

I assumed that the rug would contain verses from the Koran.
Where are the Samburu and Masai Shields?

[DariusBane]

I was thinking it looks like the lobby of a holiday inn express

[null and void]

The Audacity of Taupe.

The longer we keep using that phrase the more interest it should ecru...

[magslinger]

I learned it from my Yooper mother.

[getmeouttaPalmBeachCounty_FL]

Oh come on. Everyone needs a place to kick up their heels and relax.

[Chode]

yeah, prolly not...

[tanknetter]

Bubba's Oval Office, sink not included.

Yeah, Clinton's Oval Office was truly hideous.

Obama's actually seems pretty decent to me. Of recent Presidents' I did like George HW Bush's the best.

[Chode]

pretty much...

[BenLurkin]

“Bostonian champion of social progress”

Bolshevik?

[GAB-1955]

The decorators did a decent job, considering 1) too much beige and 2) the Oval Office didn’t need redecorating. Can we put the old rug back? Can we put a new President in it?

[magslinger]

Come to think of it, the White House is a cheap motel. They pay the guests to stay there.

And yeah, I am thinkin of Bubba.

[GAB-1955]

The decorators did a decent job, considering 1) too much beige and 2) the Oval Office didn’t need redecorating. Can we put the old rug back? Can we put a new President in it?

[ecomcon]

Skinny girly hands that never did a day’s work. Pathetic.

[COUNTrecount]

http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/theodoreparker.html

[4Liberty]

Why is this in the ‘Opinion’ section of the Washington Post?

This is factual reporting. It is an objectively verified screw up, on the part of the WH. Not an “opinion” piece.

If it were President Bush - it would NOT be hidden in the ‘OpEd’ pages,it would be there on the front page....

right next to the story headlined

“U.S. Unemployment rate rises again, millions continue to suffer.”

[LostInBayport]

It's ironic that Abraham Lincoln's quote "government of the people, by the people, and for the people", would be woven into the rug of the Oval Office. Barack Obama has no interest in what 'the people' think.

My suspicion is that he had that put on the rug so he could get his jollies stepping on it.

[alice_in_bubbaland]

“But if I were President, I would be so scared I would probably be drunk most of the time. So the yellow carpets would hide the stains.”

LOL! I sure wouldn’t want the job! For the same reason...

[ecomcon]

Now we know whom to think of when Obama quotes “Jefferson”.