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Tacky on top of tacky Sunday, Jul 13, 2008 By John Brummett They have this still-new grand hall at the Governor's Mansion. You walk through the front door of the residence and straight back to an atrium from which descend these wide, steep stairs into this expansive room where they hold dinners and events and so forth. It's nice, I guess, if you like big and new and cold, which I don't much. I like old and cozy and drafty, like a Hillcrest cottage. But the point was that they needed something big at the Governor's Mansion because, for some reason, people think it's hot stuff to hold events there. Until the other day, the opening to this hall was adorned overhead with brown plastic letters, about five inches in height, proclaiming the unfolding space to be "The Janet M. Huckabee Grand Hall." The facility was erected with private funds raised largely under the leadership of Mrs. Huckabee, who fixated on the inadequacy of the state's official executive residence from the moment she and her brood moved in. She had me out once - before she came to despise me - to show me how cramped the living quarters were. She lamented the proximity of the living space to the public space downstairs. Janet put together the Governor's Reunion to raise money for this new public gathering space, this "grand hall." She always said it was a misnomer to call this official home a mansion, except I don't think she said misnomer. I think maybe she said joke. There was the time in the 1990s when I was having lunch with the subsequently disgraced Nick Wilson, then a state senator, and others. Nick was laughing that the only thing Mike Huckabee seemed to care about during the legislative session going on at that time was getting the Governor's Mansion more money and getting the official oversight of the home and grounds reorganized. Janet was in a spat at the time with the existing advisory council. She thought they were snobs, talking about sconces and such. That may have been the same session where Nick ran off with the General Improvement Fund. Now here's the latest: Pursuant to recent discussion by the current Mansion Commission, but no formal vote, those aforementioned letters proclaiming this to be Janet's hall have been removed. It's for "aesthetic reasons," I'm told by Ron Maxwell, who runs the governor's home for the Beebes, Mike and Ginger. The official taste police have decreed the letters - as well as, I suspect, the very idea - to be tacky. It came to pass at this same Mansion Commission meeting that they did take at least one formal vote, and it was, henceforth, not to be naming rooms or nooks or crannies or other places at the official gubernatorial residence for any persons living or not. It happens that there is this ancillary bronze structure that refers to the room as the Janet M. Huckabee Grand Hall. That is not being removed, perhaps because of sheer weight. But Ginger, made aware of an old obligation to erect another bronze structure crediting major donors to the construction of this grand hall, has ordered up this second bronze structure citing the leadership of the Huckabees and listing high-dollar contributors. So I asked Maxwell whether the Beebes considered this the Janet M. Huckabee Grand Hall or just the Grand Hall. He said I'd have to ask the governor. So I asked the governor's spokesman, who replied that the Beebes call it the Grand Hall. Here's how I look at this: If there is anything remotely as tacky as having your name put on a room at the Governor's Mansion, and that's plenty tacky, it would be somebody else's coming in later and spending time and energy to unname the place. John Brummett is a columnist and reporter for Stephens media's Arkansas news bureau in little rock. E-mail: jbrummett@Arkansasnews.com |
