Reveal that it’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever witnessed.
When you think about how your Congressperson’s office is decorated, if you think about it at all, don’t you kind of think there would be a lot of brass and flag centering, perhaps a few busts of the American Eagle or Ronald Reagan? Perhaps a candy dish with the Constitution emblazoned on it, or a letter opener made of steel and fired from George Washington’s very own musket metal? How about Downton Abbey? Do you think there should be inspiration from Downton Abbey? And by inspiration we mean down to the color of the walls and a chandelier? Well, Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock has done exactly that, but he doesn’t want you to know about it.
A somewhat flabbergasted Washington Post reporter got what we can only assume is the shock of his life, and the scoop of his giggle-infested dreams, when he walked back in time to a place where Congressmen and women dressed for dinners with their tails a’swinging, gowns a’swishing around their feet, with jaunty white ties, and jewels twinkling by candlelight, all while the underling interns were reduced to hand-wringing, scurrying footmen and scullery maids in the under bowels of Capitol Hill.
From inside Schock’s office, of which we can only guess he presides over with all the codger and disdain of Lord Grantham himself, there are accent notes belying his true love — Downton — wherein the walls dripped red and are adorned with golden sconces and black candles. We imagine while sitting in his “Downton Room” much like the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House, he likes to be fretted over and presented with his turkey sandwiches on highly buffed silver trays and told his car is waiting for him by an inner office butler mere inches from his desk, as a valet of unknown hiring and other purpose, pulls lint from his suit and brushes the fine wrinkles from the back of his pants before he marches along the hall and out into the year 2014.
But this is not something Schock would have shared with the world, you see. Oh, the world, what with its changing times, it’s new machinery, fax machines, toaster ovens and the like, that place would not understand a longing for smirks and “meet cutes” or devilish boyish charms, or beguiling ladies with chignons and hats piled high with feathers or hyacinth. How a stern Mr. Carson simply raises an eyebrow and every one of those insidious Congressional Interns bend at his will and stifles their complaints as they carry up to Lord Schock’s office his papers and his tea. The world mustn’t know how much this is very needed in a world that often lacks turquoise belts with purple gingham and white pants!
As such, it was with utter horror Schock’s communications director, Benjamin Cole, learned that a Washington Post reporter, Ben Terris, showed up and was absconded with by the villainy of one, Annie Brahler, interior decorator for the shamefully named, and rottenly full of chandeliers, Euro Trash, who excitedly wanted to show Terris every nook and cranny related to her wondrous Downton Abbey design.
“Want to see the rest?” she asked. (Conspiratorially, if Cole’s opinion is of any import.)
From there Terris was led into a second red room, this one “with a drippy crystal chandelier, a table propped up by two eagles, a bust of Abraham Lincoln and massive arrangements of pheasant feathers.” We can only assume this is where Schock signs all of his daily documents about war memorials and land decrees before joining the weekly fox hunt.
And then his phone rang.
Benjamin Cole was on the line, furious and snarling, but willing to offer near anything to just get Terris out of that damnable eye-bleeding office of ridiculous design and inexplicable stalker-esque fandom come to life in the public relations nightmare from Hell.
“Are you taking pictures of the office?” he asked, ulcer churning, bowels clenching. “Who told you you could do that? …. Okay, stay where you are. You’ve created a bit of a crisis in the office.” You could practically hear him say, “Good God. It’s like I don’t even exist. Why pay me, if you’re just going to run your office with fawning interior decorators and slovenly intern waiters at the front door?
Terris then says a staff member asked him to delete the photos from his phone. But, as we can see, like a child who finally found proof of the Easter Bunny, Terris kept a few. However, bested, Cole would not be put off.
“You’ve got a member [of Congress] willing to talk to you about other things,” Cole said on the phone while popping a Tums and belching noticeably. “Why sour it by rushing to write some gossipy piece?”
Oh, about how we can just imagine Aaron Schock, fitness guru, Instagram celebrity, Ariana Grande fan, Tango enthusiast, loving Downton Abbey so much that he just had to wrap himself in it like a down duvet full of secrets and silver polish? He’s a human. A human who loves things. That’s not so unusual. However, many of us don’t take our love of things and translate them into living environments. If so, you’d see many, many more people working from inside cubicle-sized Millennium Falcons than you do. DUDE! THE FACT THAT A CONGRESSMAN HAS A DOWNTON ABBEY OFFICE IS FUNNY-WEIRD, NOT SORT OF FUNNY-WEIRD LIKE HE COLLECTS GRATEFUL DEAD T-SHIRTS, BUT LIKE THERE’S AN ATTIC FULL OF CIVIL WAR DOLLS IN HIS HOUSE, FUNNY-WEIRD.
Not undeterred, Cole tried to appeal to all journalists’ sense of “OMG! First! One! One!” and said “You see, the congressman hasn’t even seen the office yet, surely, it wouldn’t be fair for you to write about his office until he has the chance to see it.” Oh, what a sly dog, you are, Cole, buying time and planning a disappearing act as if that “nagging shit” of a room were pork belly profits to stuff in a Swiss hide-a-way.
That worked for a time, but then it came to run the story (About The Office) and the Congressman backed out of the interview. This is because right now, no one on earth is going to care more about this guy’s stance on politics when he’s got luxurious red walls and chandeliers in his office. Well, not really. His voting record reads like the current GOP Hokey Pokey nursery rhyme, “We do the Hokey Pokey and we turn ourselves around, no abortions, no recovery packages, no enforcing ‘gay hate crimes,’ no paid parental leave, no gun control, yes to Paul Ryan’s medicare ‘eat cat food’ medicare budget, and that’s what it’s all about!” Except we may just care if that lush office is a gift as ThinkProgress reports and what do you know:
House rules prohibit Members of Congress from accepting most gifts valued at $50 or more — including “gifts of services, training, transportation, lodging, and meals, whether provided in kind, by purchase of a ticket, payment in advance, or reimbursement after the expense has been incurred.”
So, to the more obvious point, how are things in good old Illinois anyway? Could Schock be a politician “far more interested in the accoutrements of a nice office on Capitol Hill than in doing the peoples’ business?”
We may never know. To downscale the state of the Downton Abbey office would mean Schock would go back to those, stale beige confines not fit for a Lord of his stature, and how would that serve the people in his constituency who never frequent his office in Congress Abbey?
Just fine, we’d assume.
