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Castles In Dispair   

The Times’ “Home” section usually sticks to house porn of the bold and the beautiful.  The trouble comes when they wander into check-able facts.

The paper’s housing survey of America’s junior executives, the governors, revealed the shocking truth that many of them do not care for the Victorian glam of their official residences.  I can’t speak to other cases, but almost everything in The Times’ two paragraphs on the Reagan’s Sacramento mansion debacle is wrong.

The article says

“Jerry Brown, who was criticized for not moving into state digs during his first stint as governor of California in the 1970s, turned out to be ahead of his time. When he returned to the post decades later, the mansion was gone — sold off to save money. (Mr. Brown now rents a 1,450-square-foot apartment in Sacramento.)”

As more “newsy” New York Times sections have reported in the past, the Reagans started this cavalcade shortly after taking office, refusing to live in the 19th Century splendor of California’s Governor’s Mansion and hurling California governors into decades of homelessness rootlessness.

Brown’s successor lived in another rental gifted by thoughtful moguls, as did his successors.  When Arnold Shwarzenegger came to town the owner of the Reaganesque mansion made a failed push to sell it to the state, recalled in this intermittently working slide tour.

And now Jerry’s back, in a “loft” again granted by providential millionaires.