Whitewashing

May 9, 2026

Another in a series of observations of life as I know it.

I had a king in a tenement castle
Lately he’s taken to painting the pastel walls brown
He’s taken the curtains down
He’s swept with the broom of contempt
And the rooms have an empty ring
He’s cleaned with the tears
Of an actor who fears for the laughter’s sting

-Joni Mitchell

~~~~~

Apparently, the tiny orange puppet in the Gold House thinks that it’s Spring Cleaning time. Dear lord, make it stop.

Annually, in late April or early May, my grandfather would put a fresh coat of paint on the steps of their Glover Park row house. As well as the front and back porches. We’d pull out the summer slipcovers to protect upholstery from stains. My Nana would dust, clean and polish every available surface. It was cathartic in its simplicity. Pride of place.

Spring Cleaning in this administration has a different feel. It’s more of a whitewash. Slap a coat of paint and call it done, whether it needs it or not. To wit. The majestic Reflecting Pool that sits placidly between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. For decades it’s been a man-made pond into which hot and tired visitors could dip their toes. Its color was intended to mimic nature. But no more. The orange oaf awarded a no-bid contract to a little known company. They charged six times the estimated price. And, after sealing cracks and frays, Orange Dumbo drove his fleet of presidential security vehicles, weighing tons, over the recently repaired surfaces. A coat of “American Flag Blue” will be slap dashed on the pool’s bottom. Giving it the decidedly formal look of a community swimming pool. DC is getting a similar facelift provided to Berlin in the 1930s by Hitler’s architect Albert Speer.

The next target project is the Eisenhower Executive Office Building which sits cheek by jowl with the White House campus. It is a massive gray Victorian pile. Somber and austere in appearance, its functionality in direct counterpoint to the increasingly gilded People’s House. The Contractor in Chief wants to paint it white. To spruce it up. Now, the Eisenhower is made of granite. Yup. Stone veneer. You cannot apply latex or oil-based paint without doing severe and irreversible damage to the bedrock stone. Period. Full stop. Whitewashing it, like Huck Finn’s fences, is not an option. The National Historic Trust should be brought in to consult. But we all know how well that worked with the hastily destroyed East Wing. This isn’t spring cleaning as much as wanton destruction.

Freshening up is not the point. It is a vanity project, one designed to provide cover for a crass and clueless conflict. A dodge. Nothing to see here, so just move along. Washington DC has, heretofore, been a majestic city perched on the shores of the fetid Potomac River. At night, it’s marble building glow, set at right angles to perfectly numbered and alphabetically named thoroughfares. It was meant to inspire civic pride as America’s Hometown. Today its green malls are being mauled, made to look like franchised cafes. Pedestrian walkways made decidedly low rent and, well, pedestrian. The Queens Developer is making the District of Columbia into a Palm Beach strip mall, slapping banners bearing his scowling visage on FDR’s office buildings. Whitewashing isn’t a method of cleaning. It’s a means of hiding chaos in plain sight.

Caption: current Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and a “visualization” of its whitewash.