Taking direction from Room Rater.

Whoa! Okay, I guess it’s back to the Rec room for me. And here i was, thinking i was making progress.

— Mark Leibovich (@MarkLeibovich) September 7, 2020

Room Rater gives Matt Yglesias a 6 out of 10 even though the background is an unmade bed.

This grading on a political curve is ridiculous:

Art. Window plus. Reframe. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the unmade bed. 2 point deduction. 6/10 @mattyglesias pic.twitter.com/xOfY90Cckj

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) June 26, 2020

Room Rater isn't really into neutral principles of interior decoration.

Alt Right Nazi fuks generally don’t do well on Room Rater... dorm room look with posters. Solid 0/10 @JackPosobiec pic.twitter.com/NezBXdHuMa

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) June 4, 2020

10/10. No bunker mentality. Just empathy and a desire to move forward. A bright shining example of how to president. @BarackObama https://t.co/FVc4ZpZKp1

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) June 3, 2020

Not even a mention of the empty shelves. And he gets a perfect 10? This is kind of like the way he won the Nobel Prize, and it's actually patronizing. To leave no room to say "perfect" is to say this is as good as I think you're going to get.

Winking at Room Rater — with 4 pineapples.

We have 4 count ‘em 4 pineapples for #TeamSchmidt pic.twitter.com/Oit7IvCh3k

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) May 22, 2020

I love the idea of rating the rooms in these stay-at-home media appearances, but there needs to be some competition in the room-rater genre.

It's can't just be Room Rater as the only room rater all the time.

In a failing gambet to enter the Fruit Bowl game, @DonnyDeutsch attempts to upgrade the dentist office setup. @jheil was not immediately available for comment. 6/10 pic.twitter.com/XMcD8edieZ

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) May 20, 2020

Here's the Room Rater Twitter feed. I love it, and I have great respect for the creation of a genre on Twitter. But there need to be other participants. It's a matter of taste, and Room Rater has his standards and factors, and now media folk seem to be pandering specifically to Room Rater. Prime example: Donny Deutsch adds a fruit bowl to his otherwise dull background. Room Rater is right to push back, but he's sort of conceding that there's a limitation to the his game. I think there need to be more critics, complicating the standards and questioning the value of, say, books and potted plants and "art."

Here is Room Rater's ideal:

Room Rater Team Heilemann Update: Wu Tang has joined the Mid Century Modern splendor that is @jheil room. 10/10 pic.twitter.com/rue4QQDHN8

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) May 20, 2020

Fine. But I'd like to read the Twitter feed that objects to this ideal. It's too clean, too prissy, too tryhard. It's bourgeois. It's Architectural Digest. It gives us no inroads into the interior of the man called John Heilemann. Who is he?

By the way, "gambet" is a misspelling by today's standards — but I'm seeing "gambit" spelled like that in 18th century quotes. A "gambit" is a series of moves in chess. Metaphorically, it has come to mean "A plan, stratagem, or ploy that is calculated to gain an advantage, esp. at the outset of a contest, negotiation, etc." (OED). So "gambit" was the perfect word to tweak Deutsch about his apparent effort to play Room Rater's game.

ADDED: Here's a good example of where I think Room Rater goes wrong:

Not even a plant would help. Send him a storage shed. Maybe a dumpster. 4/10 @donttrythis pic.twitter.com/QgCnKMiaNU

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) May 19, 2020

Cat fight.

The room is an 8. The cat fight is 10/10 pic.twitter.com/Mtm64wrBPc

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) May 16, 2020

A strategic strong play with bananas, oranges, cantaloupe, and pineapple.

Room Rater Fruit Bowl Update: In a strategic and strong play @jheil has bananas, oranges, cantelope AND a pineapple, the orchid and a mixed arrangement in lovely blue vase. Additionally the @WuTangClan is back. 10/10. pic.twitter.com/8s1jqiw12q

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) May 12, 2020

I love the Room Rater, and I don't blame him for misspelling "cantaloupe." You ever try to write "cantaloupe"? Any way you write it seems wrong. Wikipedia says:

The name cantaloupe was derived in the 18th century via French cantaloup from Italian Cantalupo, which was formerly a papal county seat near Rome, after the fruit was introduced there from Armenia. It was first mentioned in English literature in 1739... The South African English name spanspek is said to be derived from Afrikaans Spaanse spek ('Spanish bacon'); supposedly, Sir Harry Smith, a 19th-century governor of Cape Colony, ate bacon and eggs for breakfast, while his Spanish-born wife Juana María de los Dolores de León Smith preferred canteloupe, so South Africans nicknamed the eponymous fruit Spanish bacon. However, the name appears to predate the Smiths and date to 18th-century Dutch Suriname: J. van Donselaar wrote in 1770, "Spaansch-spek is the name for the form that grows in Suriname which, because of its thick skin and little flesh, is less consumed."

That's more than you needed to know about South Africa! Yet, it's interesting. Spanish bacon. I guess that's like "Welsh rabbit."

You may want to know what was that first mention of cantaloupe in 1739, and I have the (unlinkable) OED at hand, so let me tell you:

1739 P. Miller Gardeners Dict. II. at Melo The Cantaleupt [sic] Melon:..the Flesh..is of a rich vinous Flavour.

Spelling was crazy in the old days. I'm looking through these OED examples. In 1763, we get  "Cantaleupe" ("The Cantaleupe..is held in the greatest esteem by all the curious in Europe"), 1777 brings  "Cantalupe" ("The Melon is a Crimson Cantalupe"), 1786 gives us "Cantaleupe,"  1808 has "the rock-cantelope," 1839 has "Cantaloup," in 1860 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote "cantelopes," 1863 brings "cantalupe, 1883 has "cantelope," and only finally in 1890 do we get the "proper" spelling "cantaloupe." Why that one stuck, I don't know. I think "cantelope" was the best, sound-wise, and that was the one Room Rater picked, so kudos to Room Rater, for strategic "misspelling."

And speaking of Room Rater, I love this discussion he started yesterday about the comparative rating of the Canadian and the American room:

Fair is fair. Rate the raters. Canadian left. US right. pic.twitter.com/2X1jhqBp3q

— Room Rater (@ratemyskyperoom) May 11, 2020