At Ebony, Mr. Crooks oversaw the 2011 redesign under new Johnson Publishing CEO Desiree Rogers and Ebony editor Amy DuBois Barnett. Before that, he was the art director of Esquire, helping design the magazine's iPad app. The design firm Pentagram had been handling The Atlantic's art direction while the magazine conducted its search.

"Darhil's imagination and passion for ideas-driven work make him the perfect creative force for The Atlantic," editor in chief James Bennet said in a press release. "It's asking a lot to hope for vision, exacting standards, a delight in taking risks, and a collaborative spirit all in one person, and we feel very lucky to have found that."

Rogers (right) and Johnson (left) with Audemars Piguet President Francois-Henry Bennahmias

With only twenty months on the job as CEO of Johnson Publishing—home of Ebony and Jet —former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers had about as much magazine experience as the second-year j-school students she addressed at Columbia University Thursday night.

“The first year was extremely intense,” Ms. Rogers told students assembled for the year’s final Delacorte Lecture. “I learned to love my new friend, Pepto Bismal tablets.”

It was also a little lonely. In the first year, Ms. Rogers completely turned over the sales staff, adding brokers in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Detroit and hiring 65 people. Only chairman Linda Johnson Rice, the daughter of late founder John H. Johnson (and Ms. Rogers’s “dearest friend”) and the CFO remain, she said, and she was acting as publisher in order to learn the business on the fly.

“I pulled myself back. I was kind of boring,” she remembered. “I was exhausted. I was too tired to have fun-fun. I’d stop by the end of the dinner and have a drink.”

“I’m back now,” she added.

Indeed, with Jet and Ebony restaffed and redesigned, Ms. Rogers’s second year is all about expanding Johnson Publishing into an African-American lifestyle company. She’s exploring new businesses that will broaden Johnson’s reach—Jet-sponsored concerts, boat trips, maybe an online dating site—and overhauling its existing ones.

She recently installed celebrity makeup artist Sam Fine as creative director of Fashion Fair, the cosmetics company founded by Eunice Johnson (late wife of John), after she noticed the limited palette available to black models.

“I’m wearing it myself,” Ms. Rogers said.

Next year, she will revive the Ebony Fashion Fair, the annual traveling runway show that highlights up-and-coming black designers and models, and which ended in 2009.

“Why and how would I pass up on the opportunity to reinvigorate these brands?” Ms. Rogers said of Ebony and Jet. “I can’t think of more important brands that happened to have been started by an African-Americans.”

Prior to taking on the struggling magazines, Ms. Rogers cut her teeth revitalizing hard-to-love brands like the Illinois lottery, People’s Energy utilities and Allstate insurance.

“Then I went to the White House, and you think that’s the crown jewel, everyone knows what it is, that big brand sitting there, right?” she began. “And then I was criticized for saying the ‘Obama brand.’”

“But really what I meant is style... a style of hosting people in the homes. The campaign was run on inclusion so all the events were going to be more inclusive.”

Ms. Rogers resigned after a State Dinner turned a little too inclusive, but in the Johnsons, she’s found an aspirational lifestyle—one that’s not a matter of national security—to anchor her brand. And when she says the company is betting its future on “the House John Johnson built,” she means that literally. A couture exhibit of the late Mrs. Johnson’s closet is in the works, and Ms. Rogers is considering a line of merchandise (she mentioned dinnerware, apparel or jewelry) based on carpets and wallpapers in the Johnson family home.

“This couple had an incredible eye when it came to patterns and designs,” she gushed.

While Ebony competitor Essence is feeling the backlash from hiring a white fashion director (and, later, for parting ways with its white managing editor for posting racist articles to his Facebook page), Ms. Rogers frankly addressed the perks and pitfalls of working for a black magazine. (Although 30% of Ebony and Jet’s readers are non-black, she said.)

Ms. Rogers said that “being able to discuss something from the authentic place of that particular culture” gave the editors the freedom to broach tough topics like teen pregnancy, girls in gangs, transsexuality and megachurches. “No one thinks we’re pointing a finger,” she said.

As for the staff, Ms. Rogers conceded that the editor positions would be a tough gig for a non-black candidate to get—“just because it is the authentic voice”—but her sales team is diverse. One non-black salesperson secured his post by pointing out, “I’ve been selling women’s publications and I’m not a woman.”

“I am colorblind,” Ms. Rogers said. “If someone wants to take the time to learn the culture they’re in.”

The first African-American to hold the title of social secretary at the White House, Ms. Rogers was also first to bring an MBA, let alone one from Harvard, to the job. “One of the things that is particularly important for this administration is that we continue along this vein of making it everyone’s America. We are inviting all of America and all of the world to share in that splendor,” she told The New York Times after President Obama's election in November 2008.

One year later in November 2009, an oversight at a White House state dinner for the prime minister of India lead to a breach by no fewer than two party-crashers. Republicans in congress wanted Ms. Rogers to testify on Capitol Hill after the lapse, but the White House protected her, citing "separation of powers." Ms. Rogers' submitted her resignation the following February. Many accused Ms. Rogers of enjoying the celebrity of the the White House too much — The Times compared her to Icarus — but she insisted that the attention and power that came with her role in the administration didn't change her.

During her year at the White House, Ms. Rogers made it onto the cover of the summer edition Wall Street Journal's glossy insert WSJ., and she also posed for Vogue. A writer for the magazine asked Ms. Rogers if she would invite celebrities to the White House. "Of course," she said. "Why not? They're people too. Remember, we are inclusive. We want everybody."

At Christmas time, Ms. Rogers invited Observer columnist Simon Doonan to decorate the White House. Andrew Breitbart was upset about this. It came to be known as Tinselgate. Mr. Doonan wrote:

The responsibility! The gravitas! The White House! What would happen if I screwed it all up? What would happen if it all turned out looking all horrid and naff? What would happen if some self-appointed Web luminary blogged about some infinitesimally small aspect of my holiday décor, thereby setting off of a gruesome and hostile Internet fatwa? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Ms. Rogers' new job has quite a different feel. Johnson Publishing is the largest African-American owned-and-operated publishing company, and Ms. Rogers will oversee day-to-day operations. She told Memo Pad yesterday that the company isn't ready to pounce on the iPad yet. They have other, more basic work to do first. “We are not yet on the iPad and everyone wants to know the glitzy and sexy things like that," she said, "but we need to get back to the level of where we were in the heyday.”

It was after 11 p.m. on Saturday, May 1, in the foyer of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., where the incongruous combo of the chef Bobby Flay and CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer were co-hosting a Capitol File after-party for the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. Mr. West was standing right where Kim Kardashian had fought her way through a clamoring mob a few minutes earlier, while her escort, Greta Van Susteren, played the patient handmaiden.

"This isn't about politics," said Hardball host Chris Matthews. "It's about the scene. Wherever you have a lot of people together at an event like this, good-looking people show up. And they just stand around. So you'll notice groups of good-looking people just standing around because they've heard there's a scene. And since they make it on looks, they must be seen."

All the pretty faces made the party planners nervous. Press people asked reporters not to bother the guests inside. Security was tight: Lists were dutifully double-checked; IDs were required.

In the ballroom, Mr. West sauntered along behind two of his co-stars-Michael K. Williams (the scar-faced bandit Omar) and Sonja Sohn (Kima, the tough lesbian cop)-who were holding hands (unromantically) and making a beeline for a back staircase, where a beefy security guard protected the entrance to a VIP balcony.

Mr. Williams whispered in the guard's ear, but nothing happened. The group stepped aside while others were let up. Mr. Williams patted his brow with a cloth, and tried again. Ms. Sohn sat down on a ledge.

Desiree Rogers-the former social secretary blamed for letting the infamous gatecrashers past White House security-floated down the stairs in a red dress, followed by a waiter with a big tray.

Mr. Williams tried again, but the security guard was unmoved, and the group finally trudged off. (They would go on to surface at the glitzier Vanity Fair party later in the night.)

Or, at least, she didn't send them to the right wealthy donors, who proceeded to rise up and ousted Ms. Rogers, a source told Politico.

"While such a slight may seem insignificant, it can carry major repercussions," writes Jeanne Cummings, who uses the Christmas card issue in the lead of a piece about dissatisfaction among President Obama's wealthy donors.

According to the report, the D.N.C. is lagging--not behind the R.N.C., which has its own considerable problems under Michael Steele--but behind the pace of the old R.N.C., back when it was in power.

And--possibly because fewer Christmas cards arrived in New York, or perhaps because of the president's war on Wall Street--this city has been particularly stingy, it seems. Los Angeles has passed us, at least for the time being, as the city most eagerly filling the party coffers.

"The president is a person, not a product," adviser David Axelrod reportedly told her, according to a Times story this morning that recounts her brief White House tenure. "We shouldn't be referring to him as a brand."

It was, perhaps, an understandable mistake.

Last week, in unrelated news, Organizing for America—the grass-roots arm spun from the Obama campaign—asked Hiram Monserrate to stop using the president's logo.

White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers—who was implicated in the infamous Gatecrashers security lapse—will step down next month, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

This ought to make Republicans, particularly New York Congressman Pete King, happy. Mr. King, who's the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, has been trying for months to call Ms. Rogers before the committee, but the White House hasn't made her available, and naturally, Democrats have been reluctant to issue her a subpoena.

Mr. King even sent her a letter with 15 questions. "I take this very seriously," he told Good Morning America. Why all the seriousness about a White House party?

"[The Gatecrashers] could have been terrorists, they could have been psychopaths, they could have attacked the president, the vice president," Mr. King told me last month. "At those events there are sharp instruments, and if you're somebody who's skilled, you could lunge—I mean, they had their arm around Joe Biden. And also to be so close to the prime minister of India." 

It was among this treasure trove of vintage szhoosh that I came upon several massive crates containing large nasty shiny plastic balls. They did not exactly scream “Martha Stewart.” Au contraire!

Approximately 6 inches in diameter, they resembled something that might dangle from the ceiling of a ’70s gay bar or a doomed shopping mall. Setting aside the question of why anyone ever saw fit to introduce such tacky items into the White House, I grabbed them, all 800 of them. I was on a mission. A secret mission. Permit to explain:

Last spring, Desiree Rogers, the glamazon White House social secretary, invited me—are you sitting down?—to help decorate the White House for the holidays!!! I felt honored and stunned but not, if I am to be honest, totally surprised. This may sound arrogant, but if not me, then whom? With more than 35 years of Holiday decorating at Barneys and elsewhere, I am, après tout, one of the most experienced elves in the land. Why, conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart (more on him in a moment) was still in diapers when I began practicing my craft.

My accumulated holiday savoir-faire did not stop me from being utterly terrified by this fabulous project. The responsibility! The gravitas! The White House! What would happen if I screwed it all up? What would happen if it all turned out looking all horrid and naff? What would happen if some self-appointed Web luminary blogged about some infinitesimally small aspect of my holiday décor, thereby setting off of a gruesome and hostile Internet fatwa? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

MARCH 2009: MEETING DESIREE.

Why do I feel as if I am standing in a hole? Because the gorgeous and statuesque Desiree Rogers is 5 feet 10 inches tall, that’s why.

During lunch at Fred’s, La Rogers pulls a legal pad out of her Vuitton shoulder bag. She reads me notes taken at a meeting with Mrs. Obama the previous day: Reflect. Rejoice. Renew. This mantra will serve as my guiding principle for the first Obama Holiday.

I suggest that we incorporate some children’s art. Desiree agrees and goes on to tell me about the above-mentioned warehouse. A light bulb goes on. Let’s combine the kids’ art with a recycling moment! Maybe there will be some big gnarly ornaments from some past administration that can be customized, painted and repurposed. Reflect. Rejoice. Renew. Recycle.

SEPTEMBER 2009: MEETING MRS. OBAMA

During the summer, I made repeated trips to our nation’s capital to meet with Desiree and her incredible team of collaborators and volunteers, plus the legendary W.H. flower-shop team. At the helm: Sally Armbruster, Desiree’s assistant, and, most importantly, a top-notch event/set designer named Kimberly Merlin. La Merlin shouldered the bulk of the planning/creative-resourcing responsibility. I provided the overarching vision while Kimberly creatively whomped a solid design proposal together with unerring artistic elan, i.e., she did most of the work. Bravo, Kimmy!

By September, Desiree, Kimberly, Sally and I were ready to unfurl our reflect/rejoice/renew/recycle game plan to Mrs. Obama.

Why do I feel as if I am standing in a hole? Because Mrs. Obama is 5 feet 11 inches tall, that’s why.

The first lady—she dresses with the chic understatement of a Mona Lisa Smile Wellesley gal, circa 1950—looks outstanding in a navy blue and apple green summer dirndl-skirted dress with a waist-accentuating argyle cardigan. She bends down and gives me a hug and thanks me for my hard work. I’m kvelling.

We show her our boards and swatches and talk her through the vast and complex proposal of wreaths and trees and garlands, East Wing, West Wing, the Nativity, Residence, Oval Office, etc., etc. She interjects great ideas and keeps us on track. In a lifetime filled with presentation meetings, this was, for me, the easiest and the most pleasurable. Our first lady has great taste. She is a quick study. She is delightful and cultivated and inhabits her current role with grace and intelligence.

Her long-standing interest in style makes the process easy: She likes the “softer, more Romeo Gigli colors.” She agrees with my suggestion that we should use “a Lanvin-ish antique-looking glitter” instead of anything too sparkly. While Mrs. Obama loves the idea of “the Wish Tree,” an interactive piece created by a Hoboken-based company named Cardboard Design, her most enthusiastic response is reserved for the 800 recycled silver balls that are proposed for the monumental Blue Room Tree. Together we decide that decoupage, rather than painting, is the way to go. Mrs. Obama suggests that we include the efforts of not just kids, but people of all ages at community centers around the U.S. The theme? Great American Monuments.

Before you can say “Bo, the Portuguese water dog,” the balls are shipped off by Sally and her interns to diverse organizations in every state. We include a jug of Mod Podge and a directive written by yours truly on the pitfalls and pleasures of decoupage.

DECEMBER 2009: TIME TO MAKE THE DOUGHNUTS

The installation of the holiday décor follows close upon the Manolo heels of the Salahi party-crasher debacle. As a result, security is tight. All the incoming boxes of pepper-berries, hydrangeas and pine garlands are sniffed and prodded. Extra precautions are taken with the 800 formerly-hideous-and-now-hopefully-fabulous silver balls. Coming as they have from such a broad spectrum of locations, they represent a complex security challenge. I am itching to take a look at the results. This will be my first encounter with the hundreds of returning orbs. Finally, they are released and delivered to the Blue Room. I dive into the boxes.

The citizens of the United States of America have done a bang-up job. The balls are the perfect mixture of wholesome holiday cheer, patriotism, creative expression and fun. While there is no shortage of Mount Rushmores, Niagara Falls and Grand Canyons, most of the creators took a more small-town route, commemorating local landmarks and institutions. Inhabitants of an Indian reservation fringed and beaded theirs with extraordinary skill. One clever person turned his/hers into a Georgia peach. So far, so good.

We are on a very tight deadline. The relentless schedule of holiday events starts the next day. While Kimberly and her team fling grapevines, magnolia wreaths and lotus pods hither and thither, I set about the task of festooning the massive, ceiling-scraping Blue Room Tree. After eight hours of ball-tying, scaffolding-wrangling and ribbon-pinking, we are done. On Wednesday, Dec. 2, we add the magnificent hand-beaded Project Alabama tree skirt. Et voilà! I am very proud of our “Monuments” tree. It looks gorgeous.

Hearing a racket outside, I turn and manage to catch the president jumping aboard the US 1 helicopter to go make his now famous Camp David Afghanistan speech. On my way back to the W Hotel across the street, I encounter Bo and give him a pat on the head. I reflect on the majesty of the U.S. A person can emigrate to this country with a dollar and a dream and, if he shleps hard enough, end up szhooshing the White House.

During the first three weeks of December, the White House schedule of fetes and receptions proceeds without incident. The Wish Tree is groaning with wishes. Oprah and HGTV praise and immortalize our efforts. Everyone is happy. Even Pat Nixon’s old Faberge orbs, polished up and reused in one of many bipartisan gestures, are happy.

DEC. 23: THE BLOGSPLOSION

Some grody little snapshots find their way to Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government Web site HQ. The iPhotos contain carefully chosen and gruesomely misleading micro-close-ups of three of the 800 Blue Room balls: Barely visible is a postage-stamp-size Andy Warhol Chairman Mao from, I assume, a Pittsburgh Warhol Museum–themed ball; a micro-mug-shot of a good-hearted vaudevillian tranny entertainer named Hedda Lettuce; and a pecan-size Obama head decoupaged by a fan onto Mount Rushmore. These three details are seized upon by Mr. Breitbart and attributed directly to yours truly: “Transvestites, Mao and Obama ornaments decorate White House tree.”

The BG posting implies that I have manipulated the content of the décor to incorporate my own malevolent agenda, expressing communist sympathies and launching an attack on family values by including a mug shot of Hedda Lettuce.

There is no way to even begin to address the idiocy and inaccuracy of these notions. There is no such thing as redress on the curse that we call the Internet. Big Government has dropped me in the shazzit and the hating begins. Within hours, Hedda and mini-Mao have gone viral and global with Fox News and tens of thousands of blogs and hits.

Homicidal hatred rages. Death threats involving baseball bats and my head, etc. You get the picture. Merry Christmas, Mr. Doonan, and welcome to Tinselgate.

As somebody who was raised by an arch-conservative working-class mom and a lefty dad, I am no stranger to the concept of a feisty debate. But why the threats of violence? The willingness of wing-nut Web

devotees everywhere to jump aboard the hostility train was staggering and extremely unfestive. Even Gawker fanned the flames, calling me a “noted gay male.” How about “ping-pong ace” or “animal lover?” There are many other facets to the First Elf, you know.

The one person who kept her sense of humor was Hedda Lettuce herself. (She apparently decoupaged her ball while volunteering at a senior gay fund-raiser.) Spewing double-entendres, she blogged about the exhilaration she experienced knowing that one of her balls was now hanging on the White House tree.

The irony of Tinselgate is fairly breathtaking: A person donates his time and expertise—for free!—thereby saving taxpayer money. That same person then uses his ingenuity—incorporating the creativity of kids and needy folk and reusing tchotchkes from previous administrations, thereby saving even more dosh—and ends up on the receiving end of a torrent of threats and physical abuse from his fellow Americans.

And so to you, Mr. Breitbart. Now that the dust has settled and the homicidal emails have slowed to a trickle, I realize that I owe you a debt of gratitude. By dropping the First Elf in the poop, you have unwittingly provided me with a searing insight into the pathetic and disastrous state of our comment-obsessed culture. Thanks to you, I see now that there are two kinds of people in the world: In the first group, we have those who “do,” and in the second group, we have those who sit at their computers on their ever-widening asses blogging, platforming and commenting on the not-always-perfect efforts of the first group. Tinselgate has renewed my commitment to keep my tight ass fairly and squarely plonked in that first group.

Thanks, and happy New Year!

"I take this very seriously," Representative Peter King said on Good Morning America today. Mr. King accused the White House of "stonewalling" his efforts to investigate how the infamous Salehi couple got into that state dinner, by subpoenaing Social Secretary Desiree Rogers. But the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee said it wasn't personal with Ms. Rogers. But it is personal with press secretary Robert Gibbs, who Mr. King thinks is being "kind of a wise guy" for mocking his interest in the matter.

"I don't think even Peter King would have the audacity to in some way put the Salahis in the trifecta of Watergate, 9/11 or some of the financial dealings," Mr. Gibbs told reporters yesterday morning.

"The only audacity I have is the audacity of hope that the White House will be honest, and so far, they're not being honest on this issue," Mr. King said this morning.

Carine Roitfeld told New York magazine that she is not, in fact, launching a teen version of French Vogue. [The Cut]  

The last show White House social secretary Desiree Rogers attended on her one-day trip through Fashion Week was Marc Jacobs, which she said was her favorite. [WWD] 

The odd collection of guests at Justin Timberlake's William Rast show included Ms. Roitfeld, Anna Wintour and her daughter Bee Shaffer, actress Jessica Biel, Mr. Timberlake's former 'N SYNC bandmate JC Chasez, and Paris Hilton. [Fashionista] 

Here are some high-resolution photos of the poor models at Herve Leger falling all over the place yesterday. [Jezebel]