(03-18-2017, 11:52 AM)The Wonkette Wrote:(03-18-2017, 01:52 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: So what is good taste? As usual, restraint. It's safe to say that the Prime Minister of the UK is still one of the most powerful people in the world. To be sure, even Sir Winston Churchill did not have or did not use the power to order the murder of a dissident or an opponent, unlike some of the dictators depicted through their digs. He had other, more pressing concerns.
Victorian? When I picture a Victorian parlor, simplicity is not what comes to mind.
![[Image: 0db4e3f6909fc7b390f2bfd3c8745b71.jpg]](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/0d/b4/e3/0db4e3f6909fc7b390f2bfd3c8745b71.jpg)
10 Downing Street apparently does not have the infamous Victorian parlor that features such nouveau-riche excess. I can imagine someone having a display like this after winning the Super Duper Megabucks lottery.
Parlors have disappeared from modern life or become mere 'porches', and even those are rare in American life. A parlor is simply the outermost show of display to people who might never be invited fully into one's house. They are simply impractical.
It is in bad taste to overwhelm or intimidate a guest. Clutter (see how I mocked Imelda Marcos, arguably the worst sort of woman possible -- a tyrant's moll -- see Elena Ceausescu, Simone Duvalier, Magda Goebbels, Sajida Hussein, Chiang Ching) is always in bad taste.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.