BS: The Secret Life of the White House

Subject: New Yorker: Secret Life of White House
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Feb 21 - 02:08 PM

Remember the feature film, The Butler, with
Forrest Whittaker as the White House chief butler who lived
to greet President Obama as a guest and not as an employee.

I remember that final scene and final line,
when said butler (recently widowed, the wife played by Oprah Winfrey)
came to the White House to receive an honor from the President.
The new butler started to direct the old man towards
the function room in question,
and with dignity, the former butler said:
"I know the way." And walked to the President, alone.

With the transition between new Presidents and new Administrations,
a former Obama speechwriter, who continued to cover stories as a journalist after Obama left office,
authored "The Secret Life of the White House" for a feature story
in the New Yorker.

Subject: RE: BS: The Secret Life of the White House
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 28 Feb 21 - 02:50 PM

A typo of mine put this BS thread
above BS.
I didn't know I could even do that!

Subject: RE: BS: The Secret Life of the White House
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Feb 21 - 03:44 PM

I'm not sure there actually is a "chief butler" in the Whitehouse. In the movie The Butler, the butler was a White House servant who worked on the staff of the White House Chief Usher, the manager of the staff and operations of the White House. Traditionally, the Chef Usher works up through the ranks of the White House Staff, but the past president brought in a Chief Usher from the Trump hotel chain. There was a controversy on Inauguration Day because Chief Usher Timothy Harleth had been dismissed from his job just before the Biden inauguration, and word had it that there was nobody to open the door when the Bidens arrived. Some accused Trump of firing the Chief Usher, but it could be Joe Biden who dismissed him. Snopes is not taking a stand on the issue - so apparently, it's not really an issue.

There's a good article about butlers and ushers in Vanity Fair from May 2017.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: The Secret Life of the White House
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Feb 21 - 08:02 PM

What the New Yorker feature story does emphasize
is the way things went down
once the Bidens actually got into the door at the White House.

Never before, in presidential history,
had a newly arrived President, with the First Lady,
sought out the entire assembly of staffpersons the minute they got in the door
in order to greet them all in person.
The article says that one of the longtime staffers,
telling the reporter about the occasion,
broke down and wept.

Also in the article:
when the Trumps bade farewell to the White House staff,
the staff, following instructions,
all crammed into a single room with no social distancing
for the moment of the departure.
As soon as the Biden transition went into effect,
the staff put on their facemasks
and arranged themselves with social distancing,
which definitely took more than a single room
and if I recall the article right,
spread down the length of at least one hallway.

And the Bidens made a point of following
that line of socially-distanced White House staff.

The article also touches on COVID-19
reporting that some of the staff
came down with COVID-19 despite their best efforts,
because there was no consistent direction or leadership
from the top about protocols on the job.

Interesting, though, that one staff representative
says of Timothy Harlech that
of the chief ushers since President Obama's administration,
Harlech was the one who seemed to care the most about the staff.

Subject: RE: BS: The Secret Life of the White House
From: Donuel
Date: 01 Mar 21 - 09:54 PM

You guys go a long way to avoid the issue of obvious racism and revenge.

Trump secretly was vaccinated in the White House this January. Whatta guy.

Subject: RE: BS: The Secret Life of the White House
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Mar 21 - 01:40 AM

Donuel: huh?

Keberoxu. Not a particularly difficult accomplishment for Harlech to be the most caring chief usher since the Obama administration, since he was the only one. The previous chief usher, Angella Reid, was an Obama appointee who was dismissed by Trump in May 2017, just shortly after Trump took office.

Subject: RE: BS: The Secret Life of the White House
From: gillymor
Date: 02 Mar 21 - 06:55 AM

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-got-covid-vaccine-janu

I heartily agree with the author's conclusion at the end of this article.