Mirrors to make it dissapear. Red paint to make it a feature. With a television or a screen so you have too smaller rooms. With a low surrond table/benches so that it is a centrepiece. With columns/stripes elsewhere in the room so that they repeat the theme it creates. With the wall colour as if it is a non issue. With a chainsaw so it goes way. With outward-facing lights so it is too glary to look at any way. With same curtains that are acoss the windows so that it is camoflaged and looks less substantial. With one of those weird-sounding-named perspective pictures so that you can enjoy looking "through" it from one or more particular places. As a Greek column so that you can convey that you undertand and participate in ironic postmodern architecture. By scraping half of the covering off and adding roofing material and drainage to the other side so that you can tell your friends that you particpate in deconstructive architecture. Surround it with an aquarium. Surround it with an indoor garden jungle. String a hammock or two off it so you can say, "man we were so lucky to have this coumn here so we could hang our hammocks and still be able to use all the room!" With a same-strength steel coumn that is just as strong. Replace it with a beam from one side to the other so that it is no longer structurally required. Run a wall up to it. Or, if someone asks you, "how can you decorate a square pillar or column in the middle of a living room?", you can say "um, it seemed like a good idea at the time, do you think that I shouldn't have?"

Make it not "the middle of the room," by furniture placement. Middle of the room implies that it is the center of all focus, so first try to rework the seating areas so it is not. Imagine your column in any of these rooms where there are multiple "conversation areas.” See:

Hey, that's a better idea.