White House

I have a bad habit of posting things under previous times, so it looks like I am far more regular in my posting than I actually am. I usually think of these splendid little monologues while I’m doing something. One of these days I’ll launch into my diatribe on smoking, which I think about every time I pass through the cloud when I enter a building here in D.C. A couple Saturdays ago The Redhead and I took a tour of the White House, and I instantly thought, “This is completely laughable. It deserves a spot in my blog.” I let The Redhead have a chance to do it first, but she’s had enough time that I think it’s fair to take my turn at it now.

If anyone has actually gone on a White House tour you’ll know the exact things I’m going to make fun of. These tours have to be planned in advance through your Senator or Representative’s office. I think they used to have a separate line in which wait outside for a few hours and get in, but like a lot of things in this town, that disappeared with all the security concerns. So a few months ago we had our names submitted through several congressional offices. You can do this when you know half a dozen interns working on Capitol Hill. (Side note: a guy working here once remarked, “I can’t believe the greatest government on God’s green earth is run by interns and kids in their 20’s.” This got a good laugh out of the conversation until we realized that it’s true. All of these offices are staffed with an army of interns and then some of them stay on for the exhausting jobs for a few more years. And this is what makes the country run. Forget the smoke-filled rooms and the power plays—the interns are in charge. Okay, maybe not quite, but they do get everything done. Without interns, who would drive Ted Kennedy around when he’s had too much to drink? Who would keep Trent Lott from saying remarks that would cause a scandal? Oops, too late.) Anyway, we got a tour through Senator Orrin Hatch's office.

So one fine Saturday morning a few weeks ago The Redhead and I took a stroll down Pennsylvania to the White House. It’s about 6 blocks away from our house, and it’s a pretty nice walk. They just opened a segment of Pennsylvania Ave in front of the White House to pedestrian traffic, so that was nice to walk around. Even with instructions on how to get there, we still couldn’t figure out where to be for the tour. D.C. has signs everywhere but none of them are really useful. They are always pointing towards something you don’t want to go to, and the place right next door that you’re trying to find isn’t labeled. With the help of some surly Capitol Police and some Park Rangers (The Mall is technically a national park.) We got there just in time to go through with the group.

I was a little disappointed with the security—it’s harder to get into my building that it is to get into the White House. We then walked for 15 minutes through sections of the White House, and that was the tour. It was “self guided”, which is to say that you were funneled through like cattle in a stock yard and then you left. Several of the rooms on the lower level were closed at the time because of some function that was to be held that evening, so that was lame. Some of the rooms were pretty cool, like the Blue Room. It looks out over the Mall and you can see the Jefferson Monument and the Washington Monument. Most of the other rooms are just old, and they look nice but they’re nothing to write home about (But apparently enough to write a blog about). The paintings of former presidents and first ladies were probably the best part. As we walked into the Cross Halls a guy in the tour yelled, “Hey look! It’s Bill!” Sure enough, there was former president Bill Clinton’s painting. I was about to remark how unflattering it was when I turned around and got the scare of a lifetime. Unfortunately for her (and for all of us) Senator Hillary Clinton has an equally-large and surpassingly-scary painting in the same room. It was a really freaking looking painting. I mean, that woman scares me normally, but the painting was horror-flick material.

So that was our tour of the White House. It was nice, and I’m glad we went because it was such a nice day, but the actual tour wasn’t the highlight. In the words of The Redhead, “George and Laura didn’t even come in and say hi.”

Post Note: never type in "White House dot com". Turns out an enterprising porn site operator got that domain name during the late 90's. I'm sure there are a lot of jokes I could tell about that, but I'll let them go. Sometimes less is more.