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Wednesday I was invited to the White House to attend a reception that President Obama and the Greek archbishop were hosting for Greek Independence Day. I'll walk you through my observations of what it's like to visit the White House, along with a few photos. You can see more of my photos via the cool little widget I posted above - and if you click on one, it will take you to my Flickr page that contains the rest of the photos (or click here).
You can scan through my photos from yesterday's White House celebration of Greek Independence Day, I've got 32 photos, and I'll post a few here.
So, I got a phone call last Friday or so, inviting me to the Greek Independence Day reception at the White House. They asked if I might be interested in going. Uh, yeah. Now, I'll admit up front that I'm probably going to gush a bit when talking about the day. I know, a real reporter wouldn't gush. Well, that's the advantage of being a blogger. We get to be real people too. And when a real person gets to go the White House to meet the President, he gushes (unless he's an idiot or dead, well, or perhaps meeting George Bush).
Anyway, I raided my closet hours before heading out, hoping that I'd finally uncover a matching shirt and tie after the move to the new condo, and ran down the corner to grab a cab. It's funny, but standing on the corner, waiting to go see Obama, it felt an awful lot like an episode out of Stargate SG-1 (the one where Dr. Wehr is outside her place trying to grab a cab to go to the White House for the first time). I wondered if I was going to get into a fight with someone trying to steal my cab, and whether I'd have to pull the "I'm going to see the president, what are you doing?" line. Fortunately, the cab ride was uneventful, I got out just north of Lafayette Park, so as to avoid the traffic, and walked towards the White House, past the crazy protesting people. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against protesters. But the folks who permanently set up shop to protest outside the White House are certifiable.
So I walked by the crazy people and made my way to the nearest gate. I was supposed to go the southeast gate, but over the years they apparently blocked off the sidewalk between the White House and the Treasury building to the east (it used to be open). So I asked the guard if I had to walk around, and he had a guest list readily available (even though it wasn't the right gate), and let me in (odd observation: he was wearing cologne, which I found kind of funny, and hot, for Secret Service). I walked up to the nearest entrance, and was waiting to talk to the guard, when the woman in front of me turned around and asked what the nearest street was to the east, going north-south. I told Diane Sawyer that it was 15th Street. She was very gracious. It was now my turn, and I found out that this was the wrong entrance. The guard gave me a "how did you get in here?" look. I was like, uh, hot cologne guy over there let me in. So he directed me to yet another entrance, further south.
Another entrance, another name check, and I was quickly inside going through the metal detector, and bam, you're in the White House. After you're cleared, at least in the East Wing, you're pretty much on your own. It was actually rather odd. Lots of staff standing at attention and smiling, but no clear sense of where you're supposed to head, or whether you'll be shot for attempting to go through the wrong door. I though it best to follow mom's etiquette advice for using that odd piece of silverware at a formal dining table - watch what everybody else is doing.
So I followed the sea of dark blue suits and a spattering of spouses (the Greek-American political/business class is decidedly male) down a long hall, where we dropped off our coats in a room with beautiful red comfy chairs aligned in perfect rows. It sure looked an awful lot like the White House's family theater (let's face it, they can't really go to the local cinema). We weren't permitted to use cameras here, or possibly it was closer to the entrance, so no shots of the comfy chairs.
Finally, we walked up some steps, and I could hear Greek music (which was terribly odd - the music was great, just odd being in the WH and hearing Greek music). Even odder was the Greek language coming out of every other person once I reached the top of the steps. Greekapalooza was on.
(Georgia10 from Dkos and me, in that first room, looking ethnic)
I entered what looked like a rather French kind of formal room. Tall ceilings, swirly trim everywhere, beautiful portraits of the presidents on the walls (Clinton's, which was very nice, was facing us as you walk in), and a military band, in red, a quartet I think, in the middle, playing a familiar Greek tune from my childhood.
There were men walking around with trays of champagne, a small bar in the corner, and a number of staff, everywhere, smiling and just waiting for you to show an ounce of confusion. I don't remember now what I was thinking at the time, but I was wondering about something, and must have had a quizzical look on my face. Immediately a White House staffer came up to me to see if she could help. Rather amazing. She proceeded to tell me that we could walk through any of the four or five rooms, and that there was food in two of the rooms.
Food?
In the White House?
Died.
Heaven.
I adore food. Probably the Greek in me. And the White House is renowned for its food. We were gonna have food. Yippee! I can't believe now that I didn't take pictures of the desserts in particular. A well known Greek chef from NYC, who runs the restaurant Anthos, was there, and he along with his pastry chef prepared everything. OMG. It was basically a fusion between classic Greek food and very modern, very fancy... something. Goat. Moussaka (kind of). Lamb chops that literally melted off the bone. Some kind of seafood with orzo (that I didn't try, because I had no idea how to eat it politely - the shrimp were, as best as I could tell, still in their shells). And the desserts. Small, gorgeous, and every single one of them was to die for (and I'm picky about my food). The pastry chef was standing by the dessert table, so I got to quiz him for a good 15 minutes about every detail. Too much fun.
This is the dessert room, so to speak:
(Click photo to see larger sizes)
But before I dove in to the first table, which contained all sorts of finger-sized fish dishes in separate porcelain mini-spoon/boats, I had a bit of an etiquette dilemma. It wasn't entirely clear what we were supposed to do with the little porcelain spoon/boats once we finished eating the bite-ful of food. There were big metal bowls in the center of the table, but they were empty, and I didn't really want to be the first one to take a stab at using the fine silver bowls as refuse. So, I asked the nearest WH employee, since they appeared to be all-knowing and insanely helpful. He told me I could probably just put it in the silver bowl. I said "probably?" I don't plan on being known as the guy at the WH reception who used Mrs. Madison's silver as a garbage can. So he directed me to "George," the guy in charge.
George had a hefty accent and looked like ten of my uncles. He might have been Greek, it was hard to tell, but I presented my etiquette dilemma to George and asked him what to do with the dish-spoons. George told me that I couldn't take the dish-spoons home with me as they had to go back to the kitchen. I was mortified. He thought I was asking to steal the damn things. I should have just used Dolly Madison's silver and been done with it.
The room we were in now, it quickly became clear to me, was the East Room - the room where Obama held his prime time press conference Tuesday night, and the online town hall yesterday. It's also the room in which Kennedy and Lincoln laid in state. I turned around and there behind me was the big red hallway he walks down as he approaches the lectern. The room with the desserts was the room he's waiting in before he turns into the hallway.
Your first impression on being in the White House is a mix between being in that black and white photo of John Kennedy walking under the White House pillars, and being in the TV show the West Wing. It's oddly familiar, and surreal. And a total adrenaline rush. The view out every window reminds you of some famous memory of something. You can't quite place it, but every view makes you go "oh right, that view."
Like this view from the dessert room:
And this view from the Red Room right next to it:
Some of the rooms, like the Red Room (below), don't look familiar at all. Well, that is unless you're filthy rich and grew up in 200 year old mansions.
I found out this about the Red Room from the White House Web site:
Very shortly after her husband's inauguration in 1933, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt hosted the first of many press conferences for women reporters in the Red Room. Because women reporters were excluded from the president's press conferences, Mrs. Roosevelt's press conferences erased a social barrier. Though originally Mrs. Roosevelt discussed cooking and housekeeping topics, as her involvement in social issues and her rate of travel increased, the subject matter at these press conferences turned to discussions of domestic policies.
I ran into Georgia10 from DKos, which was a good thing, since I didn't really know that many people, and I wasn't going to join the throng trying to shake hands with Stephanopoulos. At 445pm, people started gathering around the podium in the East Room for Obama's arrival. Being good Greeks, everyone was slowly jockeying for a better position, which pretty much entailed slyly moving ahead of the person who was either in front of you or beside you, as if they wouldn't notice, or fight back. Georgia and I got up to the side of the stage and didn't move. Fifteen minutes later, Obama came in with Biden and Greek Archbishop Demetrios, and Obama preceded to stand about three feet away from me. Excellent. Georgia grabbed my camera and shot a photo of my big head near Obama.So I snapped some photos. Okay, I snapped about 200. Here are some of the ones I liked the most.
(An interesting aside about photographing Obama. He appears to be one of those people who's always making weird faces just when you try to snap the photo. I'm told former Secretary of State Warren Christopher was that way as well (as was former Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt). Not weird faces, per se, but they're always blinking, or fidgeting, or something just as you snap the shot. Photographers out there will know what I mean.)
After the talks by Obama, Biden and the Archbishop, we all mingled around for another hour. At one point, while standing with Georgia in the Green Room, just ogling every detail, one of the Air Force aides-de-camp of the president mentioned that, if we wanted, he could give Georgia10 and me a quick tour of some of the rooms. Uh yeah. So we learned that every room in the White House gets fresh cut flowers every day. It's a tradition going back to President Polk, I believe, and the death of his son.
We also learned that the Green Room has a painting that, I'm told, Laura Bush had put there (though later on I read that the Clinton's were the ones who acquired it), opposite the beautiful portrait of Benjamin Franklin.
It's the first painting to ever hang in the White House by an African-American painter. The artist is Henry Ossawa Tanner:
Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City (c. 1885 Oil on Canvas) hangs in the Green Room[13] at the White House; it is the first painting by an African-American artist to enter the permanent collection of the White House. The painting is a landscape with a "view across the cool gray of a shadowed beach to dunes made pink by the late afternoon sunlight. A low haze over the water partially hides the sun." It was acquired during the Clinton administration from Dr. Rae Alexander-Minter, grandniece of the artist, by the White House Endowment Fund for $100,000.We also found out that the big silver tea-warmer-thing on the coffee table in front of us belonged to James Madison. (See, and you thought I was being silly worrying about putting the spoon-boat in the other silver thing.)
This is the Air Force guy who showed us around a bit, standing by the podium where Obama was about to speak:
Obama, Biden and the Archbishop spoke for about 20 minutes, then Obama turned to the people nearest him (that would be me), and started shaking hands. I was number three. When Obama shook my hand, he looked at me and said "God bless you." It was rather odd. I've never had someone say that to me when I wasn't sneezing. It became immediately evident that this is a guy who takes his faith seriously.
I just got blessed by the president. Gotta call mom.
Like I said, this isn't meant to be a NYT article about the White House. It's supposed to give you a glimpse into what it's like to be there. It was just an amazing afternoon. I totally understand why they say the Oval Office is the biggest home court advantage in the history of the world. Just being in the building, you reek of history. I think this woman's face exemplifies the feeling of all 170 guests that day:
It's funny, but later that evening, I was at a local restaurant with a gang of the younger Greek cabal from Chicago, and we were all terribly quiet for a bunch of Greeks at a loud bar in a big restaurant. One of the guys turned to me and said, "it's the adrenaline." He was right. We were only in the White House for 3 hours, but it felt like an entire day's adventure, and now we were coming down from our high. Even a flock of Greeks couldn't wake us up after an afternoon at the White House.
Oh, and don't worry. In spite of the fact that the entire visit still has me totally wowed, I'm still going to let Chris beat the crap out of Geithner.
