http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/18/the-self-destructive-mania-of-rep-aaron-schock/By Terrence McCoy March 18
Aaron Schock in Men’s Health in 2011. (Men’s Health)
You know Aaron Schock. We all know Aaron Schock.
The Republican from Illinois, who said yesterday he would resign from Congress effective March 31, is the kind of guy who has it all. Looks. Money. Success. A six-pack. Schock’s veneer was so resplendent that when Daily Caller asked him what vices he could possibly have, he seemed genuinely stumped, offering the most harmless of answers: magazines. “I read upward of 30 magazines a month,” said Schock, who has graced the cover of Men’s Health. “… I don’t get to watch TV much.”
Of course Schock doesn’t watch TV. He’s too busy succeeding at everything. But there’s some irony to this apparently innocuous admission. Years ago, as The Washington Post’s Ben Terris reported, Schock was reading a magazine when he came across the work of an interior designer.
Her name was Annie Brahler. She was the one behind Schock’s infamous “Downton Abbey” office on Capitol Hill, on which he spent $40,000 — and inspired a crush of negative attention that led to his resignation.
[Feb. 2: He’s got a ‘Downton Abbey’-inspired office, but Rep. Aaron Schock won’t talk about it.]
Brahler today bristles at the “Downton Abbey” comparison. “The design of the office is MY DESIGN,” Brahler huffed in an e-mail Tuesday night to The Post. “I was in no way inspired, asked to replicate, or even remotely influenced by the show ‘Downton Abbey.’ ” She nonetheless praised “Aaron’s open mind in agreeing to a vibrant color.”
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