If we had presses, we’d be stopping them right now. Domino magazine reports that an openly-gay man will serve as interior decorator to the White House. Michael Smith is a big-time L.A. decorator who caters to the Hollywood industry and has decorated for Rupert Murdoch and Steven Spielberg. He’s best known for making glamorous mansion’s feel homey and relaxed, which makes him a good fit for a Presidential family with kids.
We’ll leave it to you to make the snark jokes on this one. These fish are in too small of a barrel for even us to shoot, but here are all the details you need to know about our First Decorator, which is not really a title, but hey, if it gets you a Bravo special, go for it.
Domino Editor-in-Chief Deborah Needleman assesses Smith, saying:
“I’m not surprised Smith was tapped to decorate the Obama White House. Aside from being a committed partisan, he’s never met a grand house he didn’t want to get his hands on. In an interview in domino back in April 2008 about his lines of furniture and housewares, he managed to get in a quote about wanting to redecorate the White House. And as soon as Obama was elected, he started talking about getting the furniture of the great masters of 20th-century American design, like Billy Baldwin, into the executive mansion and bringing Alice Waters in to do a vegetable garden and head up the cooking, and on and on…We look forward to seeing what happens.”
It seems Needleman is besties with Smith and the magazine is running features on every angle of his White House appointment (he’s bribed her for materials with column ideas!, he compares her to Martha Mitchell at cocktail parties!), all of which you can find here.
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ChicagoJimmy
Typical. The fags are fine to bring in to decorate the joint and do the hair and make-up, but if they want any rights or legal protections, fuck ’em.
Sorry, I’m just a bit cynical today.
Doug
So you wanted a str8 person for this position instead? I’ll get my sister’s decorator’s number …
Bob
Is it just me or does that guy look more like a butch lesbian?
Gregoire
I thought it was contemporary Christian singer Michael W. Smith. He even looks like him if you look at it really quickly.
x
I keep asking how much money Black people are receiving from Mr. Obama – no one has answered the question…
Mike
Can we stop for a moment and just be happy that an eminently qualified guy, who represents for our community actually rather well, got the gig at the White House? Michael Smith is a helluva designer, and while his rooms may be called “elegant,” I can think of no better designer to work on a White House with children in mind. He is actually known for creating interiors that are friendly, classic, a bit time worn, and English as seen through the visual lens of an American.
Like all professionals at the top of their game, Smith takes on some pretty high end stuff, but as a colleague of his, I’ve never known him to be all that pretensious. Of course, should the President Elect wish to hire an equally talented professional lacking in pretense utterly, I am available for the job. ;o)
Yes, I wish more gays were serving in this administration, and I ticked about Obamma’s about face on gay marriage, but this is a unique opportunity for one of our own, and rather than doing what we so often do, which is to chew one of our up and spit him out, maybe we can just take a moment out to be happy for Michael Smith, and give him the “atta boy” he so keenly deserves.
Let’s direct more of our critism to the Vitters, Craigs, Haggards and that loathsome, glutoneous, slothful creature: Warren of the worlds, and less to our own.
mark
cuz Donnie McClurkin was too straight for the job
Hamburglar
@ChicagoJimmy: Michelle Obama is no Hillary Clinton; I doubt she’d put op woth her husband carrying on with the decorator.
Charles J. Mueller
Fluff it up, girlfriend. Fluff it up!
seitan-on-a-stick
Not the Nancy Reagan Chandelier!!!
John from England(used to be just John but there are other John's)
@x:
I don’t understand…
GranDiva
But will the drapes match the carpet?
You have to admit, you kinda left that one wide open…
Ray W. Clarke ASID
Obviously, the public isn’t annointed about the ranks of high ranking interior decorators (designers). Michael Smith is eminently qualified to do the job. Would you really want to have a heterosexual man design the interior of the White House?
Do you really know any straight men who are interior designers or decorators? If you say the name of one blue chip male designer who claims to be straight, you can be proven wrong in a moment.
Are any of you heterosexual males out there jealous?
Ray W. Clarke ASID
tothatidiot
IT IS NOT MICHAEL W. SMITH THE CHRISTIAN SINGER!!!!! THIS COMMENT IS DIRECTED AT MARC, WHO SAID ‘THEY DIDN’T USE DONNIE MCCLURKIN BECAUSE HE WAS TOO STRAIGHT FOR THE JOB’.