Why the Media Ignores Melania Trump

I spend way too much time on social media hate-perusing the feeds and Facebook groups of various Trump super-fans and Alt-Right yahoos. It angries up the blood and does bad things for my already precarious mental health but it has proven a rich source of topics for blogs. I am fascinated by the mind of the Trump super-fan, who ignores the evidence of their eyes and ears in favor of the delusional ramblings of a pathological liar and serial fantasist.  

I’m fascinated by the delusions that take hold in their collective hive mind, often taking the form of memes dispensed lazily and enthusiastically by the ill-informed through the years like a wild pinball of learned idiocy. Most recently I was struck by the persistence of a meme taking the Liberal media to task for ignoring the existence of what they deem the most beautiful, classy, elegant first lady ever despite her incredible achievements, fascinating life story and perfect wifehood and motherhood: Melania Trump.

The clear-cut implication is that feminists are hypocrites for professing to celebrate and encourage womanhood and strong, powerful women yet stubbornly refusing to champion Melania and the likes of Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway out of partisan bitterness.

Here’s the deal: if a woman works tirelessly and relentlessly against the interests of women, if she aligns herself with a vicious, unapologetic misogynist credibly accused of sex crimes by over a dozen women, and his ferociously anti-feminist agenda, then women are most assuredly not obligated to support her solely because of her gender. 

On a similar note, American Jews don’t have to support White House ghoul Stephen Miller or Alan Dershowitz just because we’re unfortunate enough to share a religion with those creeps. 

Women don’t have to celebrate Melania, nor does the press because, and I cannot stress this enough: MELANIA HASN’T DONE ANYTHING WORTH CELEBRATING unless you think being beautiful and white and suffering aloofly through a loveless marriage to a sociopathic man-baby represents an accomplishment that should be heralded for the ages. 

This is, after, a woman who perversely chose anti-bullying as her signature cause and in three years in the White House managed to convince her husband, the biggest bully in the world, to cut down on his bullying and cruelty an impressive zero percent. When Melania has an opportunity to live her supposed ideals by, for example, condemning her husband’s taunting comments towards 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg for not being more like one of his Miss USA contestants, with the smiling and the flirting and bikini-wearing, she used her voice to say that by raising her voice in protest of imminent extinction the teenager was making herself a public figure/target and consequently, all’s fair in love and war, bitch! 

If the hypnotically senseless slogan “Be Best” and the delicious irony of choosing anti-bullying as her pet issue represented an Andy Kaufmanesque commentary on the absurdity and ridiculousness of being First Lady and her husband’s belligerent nastiness, they would be brilliant. They would be more than brilliant: they would Be Best. But they’re not. They’re a joke, alright, albeit not of the subversive or intentional variety.

If a little white boy is bullied for wearing a MAGA hat expressing his allegiance to Islamophobic, transphobic, racist, homophobic, sexist, fundamentally unAmerican ideals then that is a terrible injustice that must be avenged but if David Hogg or Greta Thunberg want to make the world a better place then the rape and death threats they incur are apparently the cost of being a public figure, particularly one that criticizes your husband harshly from a place of justly earned, clear-cut moral superiority. Melania is, of course, forever on the side of her bully husband against the people he’s bullying, which I would argue undercuts her authority as an anti-bullying activist somewhat. 

When the media ignores Melania Trump they aren’t censoring her or conspiring to keep her good deeds and saintly presence from being appropriately appreciated by the general public. They aren’t fucking her over. They’re doing her a goddamn favor. They’re acting according to her wishes, conscious or otherwise, because everything about her sullenly robotic presence screams that she just wants to be left alone to enjoy the gaudy materialist pleasures endemic in the pampered existence of the trophy wife of an ostensible billionaire in peace, without having to, for example, attempt the illusion that some manner of physical, sexual or romantic bond exists between her and the hateful ghoul to whom she is betrothed in a pretty straightforward Satanic bargain: money and power and fame in exchange for just barely tolerating a horrible man’s unforgivable excesses, his unforgivable everything. 

Melania is, after all, a public figure whose signature statement, whose defining moment even, involved wearing a jacket that tauntingly read, “I really don’t care. Do U?”

Melania relies upon clothing to do her speaking for her because she has nothing to say beyond an implicit, “How the hell did this happen?” and “When will it end?”

It’s increasingly clear now that Melania was bucking up passive-aggressively against the bullshit scam that is her Be Best First Ladyship with that jacket. She clearly did not, and does not give a fuck about bullying or providing moral leadership for the American people or fulfilling the responsibilities of being the partner of the most powerful man in the world. 

If Melania so clearly does not care, why should we? Treating Melania like an empty, powerless, hypocritical cipher doesn’t de-value her negligible accomplishments so much as it gives her exactly the credit she deserves. 

Be best and a dear and please do consider pledging over at to ensure a present and a future for the Happy Place at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace/merch and get sweet new merch like The Weird Accordion to Al stickers, mugs, posters and tee shirts

AND The Weird Accordion to Al is available for pre-order at https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Accordion-Al-Obsessively-Co-Author-ebook/dp/B083QSSG6G/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+weird+accordion+to+al&qid=1578927176&sr=8-1