Free Melania!

I was all ready to write a second piece to urge compassion for Melania T…but did I read that she might have gamed the system and entered this country illegally??? Girl bye!

I could make a lot of this little detail, but I shan’t. She will get far worse in the weeks to come from the journalists whose job it is to vet her “qualifications” to compete in the First Lady Pageant. I have already staked my position against that entire enterprise, so she gets a pass—but a little tiny one like the size of Zoolander’s cell phone.

Of course there is the UGE irony of her little scandal and the invective spewed by her husband against undocumented immigrants and a visa system that allows in too many people who “take American jobs”. Yeah, whatever Max. We expect you to fix that just as soon as you bring back those well-paying sweatshop jobs that employ the folks who make your clothing line. We believe everything you say.

We want to believe your wife, who in all sincerity, is merely a passenger on that private plane. She surely is not the co-pilot (a job that must belong to one of your kids because it sure ain’t your running mate either). No, the beautiful Melania is…

Well, I will not refer to her as the pretty stewardess because no one uses such politically incorrect terminology. No, she is not the pretty mermaid on the mast of the ship—just an artful way of calling her a mascot. Nor is she the pretty trophy Stepford wife; the pretty Gold Digging third baby mother (who performed her function of producing both a male heir and anchor for her to stay); the pretty May to his gray December; or whatever other sexist description that we could think of to diminish her. She could be a real life Pretty Woman and this is how a second movie might have ended…

However, in all seriousness she is pretty obviously trapped in a gilded penthouse. 

The facts that we know about her are these: She came to the US from Slovenia as a model sometime in the mid-90s, met Max and became his consort, bore him a son, and is now infamous for swiping a paragraph from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech. The fallout from her botched speech prompted a more thorough review of her background, which led Maxy’s people to scrub her bio and build a wall of sorts (perhaps using cheap Mexican labor) to repel those who seek the truth.

In a more delicious twist of the ironic, Melania has herself, been silent (or silenced). In the same week that Max questioned the silence of a grieving mother while her husband spoke on their behalf about their dead son, Melania has gone quiet. Sure, there have been tweets…but not written by her (unless I missed the cut and paste function on Twitter). Actually, Melania has been rather quiet all along.

I recall one interview she gave a few months ago about her husband’s candidacy. In response to a question about his rhetoric, she said that she has told him to tone it down. Then I don’t think I heard from her again until that convention speech. And I suspect that we will not hear another word from Melania again…unless it is HELP!

Omarosa Manigault, a Maxy minion (ha), offered a reasonable defense of the Melania speech scandal that was way more credible than the explanation offered by the alleged ghostwriter. For a woman who rarely speaks in public, it was a challenge to do so with the poise and grace Melania demonstrated, especially in front of an audience of millions. It also must be damned hard to have the attention of an audience of millions and NOT beg for someone, anyone to set you free.

I noticed the icy body language between Maxy and the Missus a few days later when they arrived for his Ascension. The moment before they both realized they were being filmed, he shot a glare at her and her recoil suggested that he was reminding her not to say or do anything except smile and wave. And on cue, she did just that. 

Later when the camera panned over to her, I scanned her face to see if there was any hint that she might drop the supportive spouse facade and blink out an SOS. Nothing. So maybe she really is happy, she and Max are equals, and that she gets with Lady Ivanka every week to gossip and braid each others' hair.

And if you believe any of that, I'm building a UGE wall along the Mexican border out of Chinese take-out boxes.