LIBERACE TRIBUTE GUILD DEMANDS CLINTON RETRACTION; ELVIS IMPERSONATORS JOIN THE FIGHT
LAS VEGAS — The Liberace Tribute Guild on Tuesday demanded a full and unqualified retraction from former President Bill Clinton, whose description of the paved-over White House Rose Garden as looking like “the entrance to Liberace’s bathroom” the Guild called “an actionable insult to the bathroom.”
The Guild, which represents professional Liberace tribute artists, was careful to state what it is not disputing. It takes no position on the Rose Garden, the patio that replaced it, or the current President’s taste. Its objection is to the comparison.
“Mr. Liberace’s bathrooms were designed,” the Guild’s president said at a press conference held, at the Guild’s insistence, in front of a piano. “The bath in his Las Vegas mansion cost fifty-five thousand dollars in 1978. That is more than a quarter of a million dollars in today’s money, for a bathroom, arrived at through an entrance. The entrance to the Rose Garden is now a patio with umbrellas. The two entrances have met very different standards, and only one of them has been defamed this week.”
Mr. Clinton made the remark last week at a campaign event in Hollywood, Florida, where he said Congress “made a mistake not protesting turning the Rose Garden into what looks like the entrance to Liberace’s bathroom.” The Rose Garden, an iconic part of the White House grounds since 1903, was paved over last summer and refitted with white stone, café tables, and yellow-and-white striped umbrellas, an arrangement the President calls the Rose Garden Club. The remark circulated widely over the weekend, and several commentators had already objected that it smeared Mr. Liberace’s memory. The Guild’s demand is the first from an organization with standing.
A spokesman for Mr. Clinton said the former president’s comment “was directed at the patio” and that he would not be retracting it. Asked whether Mr. Clinton had ever personally seen the entrance to any of Mr. Liberace’s bathrooms, the spokesman said he had not. Asked the same question of its own members, the Guild’s president said members had studied photographs of the Rose Garden patio “the way one studies an accident.”
By afternoon, the fight had widened. An association of Elvis tribute artists announced it was joining the Guild’s demand, citing both precedent and an outstanding professional debt. “Today it is the entrance to Liberace’s bathroom,” the association’s statement said. “The tribute community notes that Graceland contains a room with green carpet on the ceiling, and would like the record left alone.” The statement also recalled that in November 1956, backstage at the Riviera in Las Vegas, Mr. Liberace attended Mr. Presley’s show, swapped coats and instruments with him for photographers, and, asked by Mr. Presley’s manager for any advice on the young singer’s presentation, answered: “More glitz.” By the following spring, Mr. Presley was wearing a gold lamé jacket. “The community does not forget a debt,” the statement concluded. Its spokesmen appeared in era order: 1956, 1968, and jumpsuit.
One tribute artist objected that Mr. Presley would have stayed out of another man’s fight. The objection was noted. The jumpsuits were already pressed.
The White House, asked whether the President wished to defend the patio against the combined tribute community, did not respond. The Liberace Foundation, which manages the entertainer’s collection in Las Vegas — the museum he opened in 1979 closed in 2010 — said it does not comment on bathrooms.
The Guild has given Mr. Clinton until Friday to retract. It does not expect compliance, and said so, noting that inquiries for Liberace tribute bookings have risen sharply since the remark began circulating on Saturday. “Mr. Liberace was reviewed harshly for forty years,” the Guild’s president said, closing the folder. “He cried all the way to the bank. The Guild is prepared to do the same.”
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