(CNN) – Remember the big makeover the Oval Office got last week while President Obama was on vacation?
Well, there’s a problem with the presidential rug.
The floor piece has quotations from four U.S. presidents and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — or does it?
One quote reads, “The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, But It Bends Towards Justice.”
As the Washington Post’s Jamie Stiehm points out, the quote attributed to King is not really King’s quote at all.
It’s Theodore Parker’s.
King often quoted and paraphrased Parker, an abolitionist and minister from Massachusetts, who in 1853 proclaimed, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one ... And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."
While the origins of Parker’s proclamation are rarely cited in today’s public discourse, a search on even the most basic of research tools, Wikipedia, reveals Parker as the voice behind the words.
CNN has been unable to reach the White House for comment.
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