a certain regard for audacity

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Okay, I know this is going to sound weird. But I have a certain regard for Melania Trump’s red Christmas trees. Don’t get me wrong–they’re horrible. But they’re also bizarrely beautiful. If we saw those crimson trees in a movie with subtitles, outside of the context of Christmas, they could win awards for set design.

But what I really appreciate about those trees is Melania’s deliberately in-your-face approach to holiday decoration. She had to know how ordinary folks and the media would respond to them, but that didn’t dissuade her. It’s as if Melania Trump is saying, “You make fun of me? You mock me? Pffft, your opinion means nothing. I will not shrink away. I will cover your Christmas trees in the blood of innocents. I will create in the hallways of your presidential palace a nightmare so hellish it can never be cleansed. I will crush your soul through fashion. This I will do to your Christmas, and though you may weep and rend your clothes, there is nothing…nothing…you can do to stop me. I will have my revenge; you will look into my narrow eyes and cower on your knees before me.”

Comrade Trump, of course, is a buffoon, but Melania is not. She has the elegance and audacity of a Bond villain. Trump may shout and threaten and bluster; he could destroy the nation as much through accident as intent. But Melania would set fire to the entire world with cold, casual contempt. She’d cut your throat with exquisite precision using a Danish-designed scalpel, then she’d kick you once–just once–very carefully and methodically, directly in the balls for bleeding on her Christian Louboutins. She may be terrible, but she’s terrible with deliberation and a flair for the dramatic.

The thing is, she can’t burn the world. She lacks access to real power, for which we should be grateful. She is mocked and scorned and ridiculed, and her only weapons of reprisal are fashion and set design. I can’t find it in me to like her or feel much in the way of sorrow for her; to some extent she’s earned the mocking and scorn and ridicule. But at the same time, I feel compassion for her. She made a deal with the devil, and I suspect it’s cost her more than she bargained for.

In a weird way, I respect the fact that she’s fighting back. There may not be anything very Christmasy about those red firs, but they’re delicious as a gesture of defiance. I only wish she’d made her walk down that hallway while drinking from a red Starbucks cup.

10 thoughts on “a certain regard for audacity”

  1. “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity…

    …And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

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  2. Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
    Maybe, yes, maybe … this IS what she really thinks!! Just like ALL of them … ‘ It’s as if Melania Trump is saying, “You make fun of me? You mock me? Pffft, your opinion means nothing. I will not shrink away. I will cover your Christmas trees in the blood of innocents. I will create in the hallways of your presidential palace a nightmare so hellish it can never be cleansed. I will crush your soul through fashion. This I will do to your Christmas, and though you may weep and rend your clothes, there is nothing…nothing…you can do to stop me. I will have my revenge; you will look into my narrow eyes and cower on your knees before me.”

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  3. I honestly have a soft spot in my heart for Melania–and it’s there for all First Ladies, really. But for her, I have a special compassion forced by deliberate consideration.

    Imagine being in high school and waking up one day to discover everything you’d been taught about your nation’s political philosophy and a large chunk of your group-identity was universally considered wrong. Suddenly, the bad guys had won the ideological war and your role in the world was uncertain.

    Then your friends start fleeing. They take husbands in the former-enemy-turned-empire-du-jour nation. The trend leads you to a life of increased materialism, one which says, “You are no longer justified by the former criteria of your defunct philosophy, but by the richest, most powerful spouse you can snag.”

    So you do. You get married and the guy’s a total ass. But he’s rich, he’s famous, and he’s got an eerie charisma to him that reminds you of the strong-men dictators you adored as a child. Then you make a baby together and you discover you actually love that child. Suddenly the pre-nup becomes very real and the threat of losing everything–and custody, most of all–looms large. The faithless SOB has your funds, your son, and he knows it–he flaunts it and disrespects you at every turn; you hate your life–you want others to know.

    You make a bold, brash statement in coats or Christmas trees. Either / or / both / more.

    I swear, she’s screaming for help.

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    • I started off with…maybe not exactly a soft spot, but certainly sympathy for Melania. I suspect a lot of folks felt that way. But over time, my sympathy sort of bled out because of crap like her ‘I don’t really care’ jacket. I do sort of respect her for fighting back against the folks who mock and belittle her, but I can’t find it in me to feel actually sympathy. Compassion, yes…sympathy, no.

      I don’t know if she’s screaming for help or screaming in defiance. But yeah, I think she’s definitely screaming.

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      • I understand your feelings about the jacket, to be sure. But I view that as something else–an inverse PR stunt–less about her as a person, more about her assuming a role she probably didn’t desire in the first place. I also view her efforts to stay in New York as a desire to insulate her son from the toxic atmosphere of the Trump White House.

        I think one day, many years from now, we’ll get the real story of Melania Trump and it will probably shock, anger, and sadden us all.

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      • Victor, first let me say how much I appreciate your defense of Melania. As a former criminal defense investigator, I have to applaud anybody who stands up for unpopular figures.

        I agree with you that she’s a tragic figure. I’m more inclined, though, to believe she’s more than a little complicit in her own tragedy. Somewhere else I commented that she’s sort of like Richard III — “Since I cannot prove a lover, to entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain.” There’s a ‘fuck you’ element to a lot of what she does that offends me but that I weirdly respect.

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  5. The pettiness of those with TDS continues. If the exact same decorations were in Obama’s WHite House all of you people would be shouting about how beautiful and amazing it looked.

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