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Georgian On My Mind [Dan Collins]

I think it’s a fine sort of architecture in and of itself, but given the sensitivity amongst Black Americans to such historical signifiers, isn’t it a bit tone-deaf–if not grotesque–that the Obamas should have chosen to purchase a Georgian Manse, architecturally similar to many Southern plantation homes?

124 Replies to “Georgian On My Mind [Dan Collins]”

  1. MC says:

    I’d get charged extra if I were to leave four garbage cans out for pickup. That’s what I got.

  2. lee says:

    Only white guys can be racially insensitive.

    Sheesh!

  3. MC says:

    A little bit like where Fred spent some time.

  4. That kind of construction is so common east of the Mississippi, I wouldn’t give it another thought. Also, it has bricks, which are very cool: we can’t really use ’em here in Cali. At least, not structurally. (Earthquakes, you know.)

  5. Dan Collins says:

    Will you stop being fair, please, LMA? I’m stoking this elitism thing.

  6. jmflynny says:

    Who took the pic and was there any trash pickin’ involved?

  7. serr8d says:

    Al Gore has him beat, except for the bricks. And no garbage cans in sight.

  8. Dan Collins says:

    Well, of course he does. He used to plough the land with a mule.

  9. ahem says:

    What gives? All these fucking marxists are millionaires. At least Marx never worked a day in his life. He sucked off of Engels’ tit for decades and even raised two or three fat daughters on Engels’ dime. Marx was a bum, but at least he had principles.

  10. Chairman Me says:

    It’s kind of a stretch. Most of the plantation houses had colonial and greek revival architecture. It reminds me a lot of the Margaret Mitchell house that Atlanta keeps rebuilding. But it does appear that a life devoted to the common good offers uncommonly good pay.

  11. Dan Collins says:

    Shit, ahem. You act as though you’ve never heard of a dachau, comrade.

  12. thor says:

    Exhale and let loose of all your John Ruskin inspired architecture projection. Now, breath deep. It’s not healthy to keep all those comparative artistic landscapes all bottled up. Press forward and bless us with rapturous commentary on the ugliness and suffering aesthetics that animates from wealthy pre-Daley Chicagoan society.

    I think I read just a wee toot of pathetic fallacy in your Obama pangs.

  13. happyfeet says:

    Needs more trees.

  14. ahem says:

    You know, I think I just had an epiphany here. (That, or I spilled the Extra Hot Salsa down my crotch.) Mao was a rich kid, too.

    Marxism is a rich kid’s disease.

  15. happyfeet says:

    God I hate him.

  16. ahem says:

    You mean a dacha? Cough, cough…. I’ve heard of Dachau.

  17. Dan Collins says:

    Ruskin was a pube-o-phobe, it is rumored.

    “Higginbottom. Stiggins. Bugg.”

  18. Dan Collins says:

    Yes, ahem. Thanks.

  19. JohnAnnArbor says:

    OT, but who is this Kiyomi in the ad on the right?

  20. Big D says:

    If Barack were to say this: “I was born poor and look where I am now. Only in America is this possible. Sure, we have some problems, but we are the greatest country on Earth. If I can do it, so can you.”

    We would be toast.

    He won’t say it though. He doesn’t believe it. I’m going to go off and “Cling” to a glass of scotch now…

  21. MC says:

    Serr8d – The Goracle still has the slave quarters though. Keeps some climate change indentured servants in there now.

  22. happyfeet says:

    Mostly I hate him cause he’s wasting my time with his pitifully insubstantial vanity campaign. He reminds me of one of those for your consideration ads in Variety. Don’t care.

  23. MC says:

    That’s a ‘shop idea by the way…

  24. MC says:

    But feets, we want your happytude…

  25. psycho... says:

    Only white guys can be racially insensitive.

    (Clears throat.)

  26. happyfeet says:

    Something about listening to the media spin Obama these last couple days has really kind of gotten to me. They don’t take him seriously either I don’t think. Hope and change are out the window, he’s just the in your face, hahaha candidate now. This leaves me unsure how to react. I have no response to that. It’s like watching MSNBC 24/7. The media has become the message has become the media.

  27. Dan Collins says:

    Flibberdigibbet.

  28. thor says:

    What’s next, Dan, are you going to read something definitive into the type of car Barack’s wife drives the kids to school in?

    If Barack owns all your piss and vinegar then he own a good portion of you. Don’t let him reel you in like that, Dan. It’s definitively typical, just as Obama implied. There are so many others more worthy of your wrath. Think of the airport Imams and those stinky, unemployed polygamists. Think of all the failures in the lives of your ex-s. Don’t those deflated yoga addicted ex-girls of yours deserve better than you are currently giving?

    Obama this and Obama that 24/7 fails la comedie humane.

  29. SarahW says:

    in your face, hahaha candidate.

    That is an astute observation.

    Sadly, the Tara-ists have won.

  30. Dan Collins says:

    But I mean, four fucking garbage cans? C’mon!

  31. B Moe says:

    Anybody want to lay bets on how long before thor starts calling us two-digits?

  32. Dan Collins says:

    BMoe,
    Nah, thor’s not like that. He’s a lot funnier and smarter than that.

  33. Pablo says:

    Let’s see the electric bills.

  34. B Moe says:

    I know, I just like to rattle his cage every now and then.

  35. thor says:

    Hey Happy, after I sexed up John McCain you two are now holding hands in a tree. You’ll reach across that isle and shake that young Obama’s hand after I’m done with him. You’re no hater. You’re just all wound up.

  36. JohnAnnArbor says:

    Four cans for, like, yard waste, maybe. But his landscaping people would tote that off, so that’s not it.

  37. happyfeet says:

    It would be ok I think. He made me look up panopticon the other day. And am I really supposed to know this John Ruskin person?

    Hmmm. I guess so.

    Following a crisis of religious belief Ruskin abandoned art criticism at the end of the 1850s, moving towards commentary on politics, under the influence of his great friend Thomas Carlyle. In Unto This Last he expounded his theories about social justice, which influenced the development of the British Labour party and of Christian socialism.

    Allusions to the forebear of Christian socialism. In a thread about Obama. Go figure.

  38. happyfeet says:

    Oh. I got behind.

  39. sashal says:

    I think that boy would never dared to buy this house if he knew that some at presidential election may question the wisdom of that purchase

  40. happyfeet says:

    I can’t hold hand with climate change morons. They want to take my moneys for stupid crap. Mostly I like McCain cause I’m hoping he picks a good VP and then kicks.

  41. happyfeet says:

    *hands*

  42. thor says:

    Don’t you just won’t to shake McCain sometimes.

  43. jmflynny says:

    #13, Needs more trees…

    I’m sure there are plenty of trees immediately adjacent over at Rezko Memorial Park.

  44. thor says:

    won’t = want

  45. happyfeet says:

    It’s like McCain and I are in the backseat of a station wagon heading west and he needs to keep his shit on his side and leave me alone or I will tell mom. I mean it.

  46. B Moe says:

    I’m thinking Bob Barr.

  47. JD says:

    Housing prices are really inflated in Baracky land.

  48. N. O'Brain says:

    “Comment by sashal on 4/14 @ 8:30 pm #

    I think that boy would never dared to buy this house…”

    Nice hood you got there, sashal.

    How do you keep it so white?

  49. sashal says:

    great job, N O’Brain.
    You recognize racism whereas I was not so sure about it.

  50. McGehee says:

    I’m thinking Bob Barr.

    I was, until he got the same number of delegates in NC as Mike Rhymes-with-Chevelle.

  51. JD says:

    I wish I could find someone to buy the lots next door to my place, for our use. But honestly, I do not begrudge Baracky having a nice pad. It only bugs me when he starts acting like it is a bad thing for everyone else, except him, to have success as well.

  52. J. Peden says:

    So now who will still say that racial histories are not inherited? And it appears that Barack just might have a Slave Master within his ancestory!

  53. JD says:

    Plus, Baracky’s place isn’t half as big as mine ;-)

  54. thor says:

    #

    Comment by Dan Collins on 4/14 @ 7:43 pm #

    Ruskin was a pube-o-phobe, it is rumored.

    “Higginbottom. Stiggins. Bugg.”

    I’m about to write a blasphemous smear on John Ruskin for an unsuspecting British prof of philosophical criticism in British Lit. Yeah, the guy’s actually from the land of Dickens and gets all knackered at those who fail to give a low bow to Tennyson’s complete genius, I mean, Tennyson was a genius when you factor in his opium intake, but you tell me if In Memoriam doesn’t scream necro-homo erotic fixation. It’s just not healthy to profess such a deep love for your bother-in-law’s corpse in touching never-ending verse. Lord Alfred could’a just picked a hole and saved 40-pages.

    John Ruskin was fag in my book so I was hoping you had some harder proof.

  55. Dan Collins says:

    Well, moral Ruskin, you know, is the model for Basil Hallworth the painter in Picture of Dorian Grey, and Lord Henry represents the amoral Pater, the two major English aestheticians of Wilde’s day at Wilde’s university.

  56. SarahW says:

    LMA ia right though. That house looks turn of the century Greek Revival, probably WAY post war. I have a few family manses in the woodpile that would shoot his house for being a yankee,

  57. SarahW says:

    By mistake of course. Same think happened to Stonewall.

  58. N. O'Brain says:

    “Comment by sashal on 4/14 @ 8:59 pm #

    great job, N O’Brain.
    You recognize racism”

    Yours? Sure ’nuff. It’s so blatant.

  59. SarahW says:

    Now I sound like a Ruskin.

    think = thing

  60. Rick Ballard says:

    Dan,

    T’aint Georgian – not even “colonial” Georgian. It doesn’t have anywhere near the proper neo-Palladian balance. It’s a hodgepodge without anything much at all to recommend it.

    The subdivision was established for those with a few bucks – it was an “aspirational” development. A 1910 McMansion.

    Perfect for BHO, a Gertrude Stein’s Oakland of a politician.

  61. SarahW says:

    Yes it is not Georgian. It is Greek Revival.

  62. Dan Collins says:

    What do you mean, it’s not Georgian?

  63. happyfeet says:

    terrifying… Ruskin, Ruxpin… I’m free associating here. Work with me.

  64. Rick Ballard says:

    Geez – I missed the Tbilisian influence. Is that Dzhugashvili’s grandson?

  65. Dan Collins says:

    Yeah, hf, that is terrifying. The idea of a teddy bear with a shaved pubic area is deeply disturbing.

  66. Rick Ballard says:

    SarahW,

    Not real Greek Revival either – entrance is from the street side.

  67. SarahW says:

    Rick, I concede you are right, though I think we agree on period.

    Look at this.. WANT!
    except for it being in Georgia. Good lord look at the price, you could do a lot with it for that.

  68. SarahW says:

    Rick, I concede you are right. Although I think we agree on period.

  69. SarahW says:

    Now there’s a trick, how did that duplication happen. Rick practices sorcery.

  70. SarahW says:

    I compare it to Humble Hall, my mother’s split-level, which I still have to renovate, and Humble hall does not come off as the better bargain.

  71. Ardie says:

    Atlanta is full of Georgian style homes–and there were never any plantations around these parts. Come to Druid Hills, or Buckhead, or Virgina Highlands and see for yourself. Real Southerners, which includes blacks and whites, prefer Georgian style homes. Too bad you Cali types have to live in cheaply made dumps.

  72. SarahW says:

    There are Cali types in here?

  73. There are Cali types in here?

    hmmmm, I know at least one is in Cali, but I wouldn’t call them a type.

  74. Slartibartfast says:

    I got behind.

    If you got behind, I got da beer.

    Oh. Back to what you were talking about. I have no idea what I meant by that.

  75. Ardie says:

    SarahW: House about Little Miss Attila! wink, wink.

  76. Ardie says:

    maggie katzen : Cali types: gold diggers…

  77. Ardie says:

    Actually, real Californians are great people. More like Southerners (Georgia type). Atlanta and Hollywood have always been close.

  78. TmjUtah says:

    No amphora on the porch. It ain’t greek.

    No porch to speak of, either, so why are they trying to call it Georgian (either Atlanta or Tblisi, no matter)? I mean, authenticity – wise, a southern porch has to be big enough for ten inbreds to clutch jugs, banjos, and cousins on the one side while Sherman burns Atlanta on t’other.

    Them’s the rules. I don’t makes ’em, I just knows ’em.

    That’s a serious McMansion. I can’t tell from the pic, but I bet it’s got a “hail the conquering hero” entry hall with REAL ITALIAN MARBLE. And the millwork probably lacks. Proportions suck, too. If I had that much area to let light in, I’d pick a window style that didn’t look like it came from a high school shop project.

    This isn’t “Welcome to my home”. This is “Look and be jealous, BIOTCH!”

    The longer I look at that house the more I see stuff I don’t like. Feh. I’m off to find my bible, maybe see if the stock wax is dry on the two Mosin stocks I’m working on… damn, nearest cousin is in Iowa.

    Such is life here in the bitter xenophobic wasteland that is the intermountain west.

  79. happyfeet says:

    LA… proved too much for the man. They were kinda stupid.

  80. happyfeet says:

    They’re enthusiastically trashing * the life they’ve come to know.

  81. No lawn jockey in view. I call shenanigans.

  82. Rick Ballard says:

    Tmj,

    It was built circa 1910. It’s just a hodgepodge McMansion of it’s time. The window treatment is (as you note) incorrect and the shed roof with demi-lune on the oversized dormer is a hoot. The lack of a gable and the appropriate opposing chimney take it out of both Georgian (as in King George) and Greek Revival styles completely.

    I find it very suitable for Senator Obama or Senator Durbin. It well befits either of them.

  83. thor says:

    Do the Munsters live there?

  84. Ardie says:

    So what did we learn today kiddies? First of all, Negroes can’t live in Georgian style homes ’cause day is for white folks and their slaves. Negroes can’t run for President, that too is for white folks. And lastly, Negroes is supposed to be sensitive about Georgian homes even though in Atlanta day live in dem and have a white maid (my wife’s best friend). (Let me guess Dan Collins is a white guy.)

  85. huh, I learned there’s this commenter calling themselves Ardie that’s a total crapweasel. YMMV.

  86. B Moe says:

    I learned that ardie is not only dumb as a post, he is as humorless as one also.

  87. Ardie says:

    I bet this is Dan Collins’ favorite poem! The White Man’s Burden (1899)

  88. Ric Locke says:

    C’mon, Dan, I’m with thor (and Ardie, will wonders never cease). Rick has it right. 1910 McMansion.

    It’s just a house, f’cat’s sake. It isn’t white. The columns don’t go all the way to the second-floor roof, and there’s no meter-diameter ball or filigreed lantern hanging on a trace chain over the front door. There are Louisiana parish presidents with fancier digs, paid for by the same suckers, of course. And I don’t know architectural styles, but I’d call it German, in the sense that “taste” means something you push.

    No, I can’t afford it, either. But not all bling glitters in the streetlamps, y’know?

    Regards,
    Ric

  89. *sigh* and in our next episode of “when jokes go bad”…..

    cause Dan’s all about nuance

  90. Ardie says:

    Sen. Obama was probably lucky to get that house given the fact that, traditionally, banks often engage in “redlining” (it is sort of like the use of “caging lists” in which white Republicans scrub black voters from lists of registered voters).

  91. Jeremiah Wright says:

    Sen. Obama was probably lucky to get that house given the fact that, traditionally, banks often engage in “redlining” (it is sort of like the use of “caging lists” in which white Republicans scrub black voters from lists of registered voters).

    This motherfucker cannot be for real. Nobody is that damn stupid.

  92. Ric Locke says:

    Balls, Ardie. And after I complimented you.

    To spell it out for the preschoolers: we were mocking a nouveau riche politician who’s been listening to lectures on “middleclassness” for twenty years, then goes out and buys a house that’d be the apple of the eye of an East Texas redneck whose land spurted oil. You are the one shoving gratuitous racism into the discussion.

    Regards,
    Ric

  93. Ardie says:

    maggie katzen: Sugar, Danny Boy can’t write with nuance. He is incapable of the task if he is a true conservative.

    “A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in “fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity”. — The Guardian, 8/13/03 Julian Borger

  94. trenntk269 says:

    Tone Deaf my ass- with Tony Rezko putting up the money for the garden and yard, this qualifies as a particle beam event.

  95. Ardie says:

    Ric Locke: I take it that you don’t live in Atlanta. And no, he is not nouveau riche–that would be, instead, someone like McCain’s beer heiress, Cindy.

  96. Ardie says:

    Old wealth is all about “Noblesse oblige”. Obviously, Republicans, if they have wealth, are either nouveau riche or parvenus.

  97. It doesn’t really look that big to me–but “big” is sort of a regional thing. I mean, the same structure in Manhattan is going to cost a bit more than its equivalent in SoCal. In Northern CA, the standards will be in between those two extremes.

    Personally, I live in a mid-century house with a triple lot–so on trash days we have MUCH more yard waste out front than the four barrels shown (yes–it has to be kept separate from regular recycling, which in turn has to be kept separate from regular trash). Though I’m leaving at the end of May.

    I know the Obama house is a bit of a pastiche, but I kind of like it. But again, that’s probably because I live in the land of endless ranch houses, Mediterranean knockoffs, and anything-with-Spanish-tile-on-the-roof. Houses in the Midwest and on the East Coast look so tidy.

  98. thor says:

    Comment by Ardie on 4/14 @ 11:13 pm #

    I bet this is Dan Collins’ favorite poem! The White Man’s Burden (1899)

    Nah, Dan mostly likes poems about Oompah Loompah warriors and baby chimpanzees, from what I’ve read anyway.

  99. Rob Crawford says:

    I bet this is Dan Collins’ favorite poem! The White Man’s Burden (1899)

    You have no idea what Kipling was talking about, do you?

  100. JD says:

    Redlining? Ardie brought up redlining? I wish they would get their memes straight. Last week the minorities were being taken advantage of by unscrupulous mortgage lenders.

  101. Dan Collins says:

    Okay, Ric. How about we settle for Geek Revival?

    Ardie: you really are a moronic and egregious twat.

  102. Cowboy says:

    maggie:

    Please get with the program. You need to burn your yard waste! Sheesh! How many times do I have to tell you peeps? That’s why they make hot dogs, marshmallows, and pointy sticks.

    Bonus: Burning leaves covers up, well, similar smells!

  103. Cowboy says:

    Ards:

    Thanks for the poem. I love me some Kipling, and he was decidedly NOT part of my doctoral reading list.

  104. datadave says:

    hey, I got more trash cans than that…so I don’t have to go to ‘recycling center’ as much, but I am jealous of the guy’s classy trash can lids. HD or Lowe’s doesn’t seem to stock Italianate lidded trash cans! Anyone in Chicago? The house is a hybrid mishmash of styles I’d say. Fitting! Georgian/Italianate/Arts and Crafts (w/o the corbels) which is semi-contemporary even. Heavy lintels, decorative pergolas un top of brick palisades aren’t Georgian and it’s hard to tell when this was built (maybe only a decade or two old as this style is also contractor/build/design keeping it affordable (which for Chicago’s elite it’s modest) Rich Ballard’s close I think…early 20th century McMansion…but what was that “notorious” land deal for? an addition or more landscaping?

  105. JD says:

    dataless – Not that it would ever matter to you, but Rezko’s wife bought the adjacent lot, and somehow, it has become part and parcel of Baracky’s property.

  106. datadave says:

    Obama is part of the Pre-Rafaelite Brotherhood conspiracy meant to inspire us to upgrade our Trashcans!

    He’s Pre-Raphalelitist!

  107. datadave says:

    thanx for the info. J-Dad!

  108. datadave says:

    Worldwide Pre-Raphaelitism…..cobbled with the Ruskin-ish environmentalism, Morris-ian socialism, Carlylean fascism….we’ve got a dangerous conspiracy going here! (hints: look up William Morris, Thomas Carlyle, and think Victorian!….and ask why Obama seems rather uptight and aloof?) Comparatively, McCain is a bawdy party animal…and might just rule as one.. in contrast Obama is Progressive/Conservative)

  109. Ric Locke says:

    Dan: Nope. The style isn’t, but should be, called “American Pastiche”. Mr. Tulip would say “–ing Travesty.” It fits perfectly with the H. Beam Piper quote I posted the other day. Hog Butchers to the World need fitting quarters.

    Ardie: no wonder you don’t get the jokes. No, we aren’t jealous that the voices talk to you. And no, I don’t live in Hotlanta, but I’ve been there a lot; it’s the point I was agreeing with you on.

    Little Miss Attila: Seen by itself, in a picture that crops the adjacent edifices out, the house might cause that reaction. In its native habitat, surrounded by four (or six)-to-the-acre swarms of minor variants, it becomes evident that it’s a product of precisely the same impulse that generates whole districts of Spanish tile, faux adobe, and bird-of-paradise, with the randomly-selected design elements chosen to be more appropriate for the climate and/or what the designers and first buyers saw as the correct attributes of “house”, i.e., what they’d seen in the then-prosperous cities of the East. It’s what you get after prosperity but before sophistication.

    You need to watch out. Your reaction (and that of many here) comes from the same place as that of the stereotypical returning tourist lamenting, “there used to be all these street vendors hawking the most wonderful pieces at incredible prices, but now they’re all driving cars and have shops and it’s all just spoiled.”

    Regards,
    Ric

  110. Dan Collins says:

    Hog Butchers to the World need fitting quarters.

    And we can’t call it Geek Revival?

  111. Dan Collins says:

    Yeah, that effin’ Raphael. He spoiled everything.

  112. Mikey NTH says:

    It seems to have some federalist-style touches to it, but definitely pre-WWI.

  113. TmjUtah says:

    Ric –

    Ah. The New Firm. It makes me want to just -ing weep, it does…

    Maggie –

    Thanks for that link. Very good stuff.

  114. datadave says:

    “A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in “fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity”

    That explains the Obamaphobia!

    alas, also explains McCain’s smiles.

    anyone else got trash cans like that? And He’s just Weird! I’ll vote for him just for that alone!!!

  115. Ric Locke says:

    Sorry, Dan, I’ve got my screen set for fairly small text, so I missed the nuance.

    Regards,
    Ric

  116. McGehee says:

    I wouldn’t live in that house. There’s no place to park the pickup truck on the front lawn.

  117. alppuccino says:

    I wouldn’t live in that house. There’s no place to park the pickup truck on the front lawn.

    But Holy God! just think what you could do with your 30 ott 6 from that top window. You know, to people who are different than you. That’s a fair trade, isn’t it?

  118. McGehee says:

    You know, to people who are different than you. That’s a fair trade, isn’t it?

    Well, the first few shots wouldn’t exactly be sportin’, but once the survivors ran for cover it might get interesting.

  119. J. Peden says:

    Come on now, that Mansion is close enough for Barack. No one ever said that Lamarkian “inheritance of racial histories, etc.” thing is perfect, just enough – for “our” purposes, of course.

    But I wouldn’t have that sickly Master’s House, either, probably because it’s just not close enough to being a cave.

  120. Techie says:

    Protip: The White House is in the late Georgian style. Poor Barack.

  121. Amandas vibrator says:

    Trashcans are provided by the city. He must know his alderman , because he has three. Typical of the homes in some of the neighborhoods of Chicago.

  122. datadave says:

    Thank you, Amanda’s vibrator. If you need a hand give me a call.

Comments are closed.