Norman Rockwell Series Has Graced White House Walls for Decades - Now the Spot Is Dedicated to Biden
Artist Normal Rockwell depicted the sweet, simple, serene moments in everyday American life that convey the lofty ideals of our nation. Maybe it’s fitting, then, that President Joe Biden would have his works removed from the White House.
Several Rockwell sketches that had hung in the White House for decades have been taken down and replaced with “several jumbo photos” of the president, according to Politico.
“Four Norman Rockwell panels of watercolor and black-and-white sketches featuring the White House — which have been displayed in the building since 1978 — have been taken off the walls after the family that owned them asked for them back,” Daniel Lippman, who broke the story, tweeted.
SCOOP: Four Norman Rockwell panels of watercolor and black-and-white sketches featuring the White House — which have been displayed in the building since 1978 — have been taken off the walls after the family that owned them asked for them back. https://t.co/cDc8xiDVsr pic.twitter.com/23bhXNB4kD
— Daniel Lippman (@dlippman) July 5, 2022
The panels are part of Rockwell’s “So You Want to See the President” series depicting various people waiting to see the commander in chief, including members of the press, military brass and lawmakers.
They were sketched after Rockwell spent time in the White House reception room in 1943, and reprints of the work appeared in the Saturday Evening Post that year.
The pieces ended up in the White House after descendants of Steve Early, press secretary to President Franklin Roosevelt, lent them to the government.
However, the family recently requested them back and the White House agreed, though it’s unclear how or why photos of Biden were considered a suitable replacement. (Perhaps we should be thankful it wasn’t Hunter Biden’s macaroni art.)
These Rockwell panels were among the hundreds of pieces of American artwork that grace the White House.
The only Rockwell remaining is an oil painting, “Working on the Statue of Liberty,” which was donated by director Steven Spielberg in 1994. During President Bill Clinton’s administration, the painting hung in the Oval Office that he made a den of iniquity, but the work now graces the residential quarters upstairs.
No one in the current administration has commented on the change or the photos that have replaced the Rockwells, but the move seems fitting in light of the way Biden has governed.
Rockwell is arguably best known for his series “The Four Freedoms,” which was inspired by and named for the four freedoms Roosevelt said belonged to all men: “freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.”
Biden’s America is a place where gender-confused men must be called women, and “dead-naming” a woman who mutilated her body to appear more masculine can get prominent cultural figures banned from social media — the nation is hardly a bastion of free speech right now.
Freedom of worship is only tolerated by the left when it doesn’t interfere with drag queen family nights, shut down abortion mills or include public prayer.
But the most defining issues of Biden’s presidency are also the most directly opposed to the ideals depicted in “Freedom from Want” and “Freedom from Fear.”
Domestic woes about the cost and future availability of food could soon make the idyllic image of a family gathered around their giant Thanksgiving turkey a sad relic of a bygone era of prosperity and abundance.
Happy Thanksgiving ? pic.twitter.com/vIGXCtDqll
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) November 28, 2019
(Unfortunately, there’s a woke version of this whole series, with “Freedom from Want” featuring a gay couple at the head of the table instead of the doughy silver-haired grandparents, but I leave it to the reader to seek out that abomination.)
Finally, Biden arguably won the presidency precisely because of the fear drummed up during the COVID-19 pandemic, and his foreign policy missteps including the pullout from Afghanistan and his failure to prevent the war between Russia and Ukraine have left Americans terrified for their future.
Replacing Rockwell’s wholesome images with Biden’s own shriveled and vacant countenance sums up his presidency perfectly — a decrepit old man sucking all of the hope, freedom, prosperity, opportunity, unity and American idealism from the White House.
Or maybe the 79-year-old just needs to see giant pictures of his own face to remember who the heck he is.
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