Not all First Ladies are enamored to be at the center of attention in Washington. The job is getting harder with the klieg light atmosphere of 24 hour cable news and pervasive social media’s incessant fawning and craving for notoriety.
Yet Melania Trump should be a strong candidate to weather the inevitable media storm. She is an experienced model, used to smiling in public view while pushing someone else’s commercial agenda or product. She has been married to a bombastic billionaire show off for more than a decade now (since 2005). She started a celebrity business, however short lived, for an eponymous line of jewelry and skin care products and voluntarily served as its principal spokesmodel.
She obviously has grit as she has endured intense gawking and intrusion into her personal space for almost 20 years in America, despite her heavy accent. She speaks several languages (reportedly five) and was able to navigate effectively while working in the fashion world in French and Italian as well as English, besides her native Slovenian. Slovenian is not a high profile common language in international fashion circles.
Take note that Melania is far more accomplished linguistically than her booboisie (courtesy of H. L. Mencken) husband who struggles to form a coherent sentence in English, and knows no foreign languages anyone has ever heard about, despite his having attended college, and having a grandmother who was fluent in German.
Melania has the prime navigational social advantages of dressing well, good public manners, and extreme financial well-being, coupled to being blessed with a very attractive female physical appearance, to assist her passage through the travails of everyday encounters with the rest of the world.
Melania has made plain from the earliest beginnings of Trump.45’s presidential campaign in 2015 she was not enthusiastic about the idea, but since Trump does what Trump wants, she made a sort of peace with it. She made herself relatively scarce on the campaign trail, attending very few campaign events, even over the summers of 2015 and 2016 when her son Barron was not in school, and so her constant New York presence near her Trump Tower home was not necessary.
Her widely anticipated appearance at the Republican Convention was not well received after the mistake of her purloined speech contents imitating Michelle Obama’s previous effort was discovered. Still, any fair observer could only conclude that this mistake was not her fault. She played her part as a good soldier for Donald’s cause.
This cock-up was more crap staff work and plagiarism committed by Trump’s carefully chosen ghost writer, who had a relationship with Trump going back a decade. Melania’s job as to read the speech with some oomph, which she did as promised and expected. The blunder was not on her card, but some hack minions who should have known better. This was the time frame when Manafort was stull in command of the campaign, before Kellyanne was brought in to establish some sort of chaotic order.
Melania’s subsequent campaign show-ups were very limited: the Presidential debates, one or two rallies, a quick look on election eve. Once the election dust had settled, she made plain she would stay in New York for the immediate future. The Trump campaign spun this gem into a mother’s defensible decision to preserve privacy for her grammar school age child attending school.
A cautious observer might point out that the election die was cast in the first week in November, when the New York school term (5th grade) had been in session for just about 8 or 9 weeks out of say 38 for the whole school year. A mid-year transfer to an exclusive private school in Washington DC for the son of the just elected President of the United States would gave been a fall off the log, no brainer for any prep school in the DC area, obviously. And happy to oblige the new First Family. Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in New York is a good school, but not in the academic stratosphere, by any means.
The fact that ‘finish the year with his friends’ was the best cover story the campaign could come up with is a testament to their limited creativity and imagination. It seems reasonably clear that Melania simply decided she was not going to move to Washington to feed the beast, and decided to stay where she was already comfortable and content with her lifestyle options. No doubt her son’s school preference played a part, but the bigger picture requires a bigger explanation.
How the Trump marriage will play out over the next four years is unknown to outsiders, and is probably the subject of active internal discussions between the adult parties and heir advisors even now. Any fault lines will become clearer as time passes, and the current school year ends in June 2017.
In the meantime, on International Women’s Day (March 8, 2017), Melania deserves credit for putting her own foot down about being manhandled into an unpaid and uncomfortable public role she didn’t ask for, and by available evidence didn’t want to assume. The fire in the belly for the radical lifestyle change was all Trump, all the time. Melania doesn’t appear in any way obsessed with the Obamas, or beating them or showing off his prowess at their expense, as her husband so clearly demonstrates nearly every day. Talk about a major inferiority complex. How drole.
As a private family matter between the Trumps, the exact details of their relationship are their business, but as with so much of Trump.45’s constant pushing, the ultimate consequences have now been visited on the equally innocent American public and our nation’s state of governance.
Melania makes herself scarce and America is without a functional full-time First Lady presence for the first time in more than 60 years. My estimation is that Trump.45 himself would be happy to feminine substitute his oldest daughter Ivanka in the prize position for public events, but she has so far declaimed any formal acknowledgement of such a role.
Ivanka did, however, pull up stakes, quit her job, leave her company, move to Washington, She now makes regular appearances at White House events, Presidential social occasions, greeted the Canadian Prime Minister, traveled to receive the remains of the combat seal killed in Yemen, goes to working dinners with Trump, and travels on vacation to Mar-a-Lago with the President, often accompanied by her husband (Senior Advisor Kushner) and/or her children.
Ivanka has also been seen with her kids wandering through the White House waiting for Grandpa, and for photo ops on Marine One and Air Force One, with and without her kids. This is a pretty good catalogue of substitute part time First Lady social practices in Melania’s stead, despite her lack of title or formal role identification we can rely on. Sort of a whatever, whenever, wherever role for Ivanka.
The bare bones nature of the Office of the First Lady staffing so far, sand the 7 week closure of the White House Visitors Office are further signs of inattention and neglect of traditional expectations. Melania did issue a statement celebrating the resumption of White House Tours for visitors this week (oh thank you, ma’am). She also previously announced the Obama inspired White House garden could stay, at least for now.
Let us not forget that in the first flush of “we won, it’s all ours to play with now” spirit in the first 24 hours after assuming office, Trump.45’s minions posted a ridiculous First Lady biography touting Melania’s entrepreneurial talents and hawking her QVC mail order jewelry line. This was promptly scrubbed after a firestorm of criticism. Melania has not been commercially active in selling consumer goods since 2012, and a very good bet is that this foolish mini-biography had nothing to do with her input. It is highly likely another incompetent Trump.45 munchkin was following orders from the Donald to get it all, as fast and as much as possible, and Melania was not fully consulted.
Similarly, in her lawsuit filing shortly thereafter, it was claimed she had suffered $150 million in lost income opportunities as First Lady because of a salacious blog story about her early years in America. That overblown claim was also quickly redacted and washed clean. That false move again has all the hallmarks of a Trump.45 lawyer inspired commercial overreach. Melania’s total business income since 2014 is a few tens of thousands of dollars. Not chicken feed, but no entrepreneurial fireball either.
All of which suggests that, at best, Melania is doing a First Lady slow walk, at her own pace, and while dragging her heels, in something of a work protest. To which I say good luck and do your thing. If this interpretation is right, no sympathy for Trump.45 the manipulator is required or deserved, but it is too bad that Americans have to pay yet another price for Trump’45’s additional failures as a person, man, and father, beyond his political gaffes and blunders.
One more item to be added to the Butcher’s Bill of Regret America can chalk up to the Unifier and Smartest Man of All Time Who Would be President, No Matter What.
All of which is a prelude to the point of this post. Melania as official First Lady, however part time and reluctant so far, is indeed a Rara Avis for America. Her First Lady Sightings are few and infrequent, and thus even more to be treasured by a yearning nation. So we shall attempt to ferret them out and provide a loose catalogue (with photos) for the enjoyment and edification of all our citizens.
Luckily today there is an exciting new catalogue entry, in the occasion of International Women’s Day (celebrated since 1909). Let us begin.
International Women’s Day Luncheon (White House) March 08, 2017
From CNN:
Washington (CNN)First lady Melania Trump spoke about equality, freedom and the responsibility women have to help each other achieve success at an invitation-only luncheon honoring International Women’s Day Wednesday at the White House.
“As an immigrant myself, having grown up in a communist society, I know all too well the value and importance of freedom and equal opportunity — ideals which this great nation was founded and has continued to strive towards throughout its history,” Trump said according to her prepared remarks obtained by CNN from Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, senior adviser and chief strategist to the first lady.
The first lady spoke from a podium in the State Dining Room, focusing on atrocities women are confronted with around the world, including human trafficking.
“There remains far more brutal and terrifying incarnations of actual gender persecution which we must face together, such as forced enslavement, sexual abuse and absolute repression of far too many women and girls around the globe. We must remember these women in our daily prayers and use our combined resources to help free them from such unthinkable and inhumane circumstances,” she said.
More than a month into her role as first lady, Wednesday marked the announcement of a more defined platform of initiatives for Trump. She cited education as a way to prevent gender inequality, and pledged her support to help bridge the divide for women.
“I continue to firmly believe that education is the most powerful way to promote and ensure women’s rights. Together we will do this not only by striving for gender parity at all levels of education, but also by showing all children, and especially boys, that it is through empathy, respect and kindness that we achieve our collective potential,” she said. “Together with UN Women for Peace Associates, we can educate and reinforce the importance of tolerance and a society filled with inclusivity regardless of race, gender or culture.”
First daughter Ivanka Trump, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, GOP Sen. Susan Collins, second lady Karen Pence and her daughter, Charlotte Pence, were also present for the luncheon, as well as fashion designer Rachel Roy.
The room of exclusively female attendees was briefly joined for part of the luncheon by two men: President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence made an appearance.
Guests dined on tomato mozzarella salad, thyme-brined chicken, spinach gnocchi and honeycrisp apple crostata at tables with oversized purple floral centerpieces, including tulips and sweet peas. The hallways surrounding the room smelled strongly floral. Also on the menu on Wednesday afternoon: white wine. Per a program, the White House served a 2015 Pride Mountain Viognier “Sonoma.”
The first lady, wearing a black, sleeveless Ralph Lauren dress, made her remarks after the pooled press was escorted out of the room.
Trump, who has made few public appearances since her husband assumed office, is living at Trump Tower in New York with son Barron, 10, and, per the White House, will move to Washington at the conclusion of the school year.
Her next major White House event will be the annual East Egg Roll on the South Lawn, the office of the press secretary announced Wednesday.
She identified combating cyberbullying as an issue she would champion as first lady while on the campaign trail, but it’s clear women’s issues are emerging as another area of passion and interest.
Ivanka Trump, also present for the luncheon, is also actively working on women’s empowerment issues, a cause near to her heart and skill set. Her “Women Who Work” book is due out in May and she’s been working with Dina Powell, a Goldman Sachs executive turned White House adviser, on promoting women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship.
The first daughter, who does not have a formal title in her father’s administration, has been working alongside lawmakers on child care legislation. She appeared, along with the first lady, in the Oval Office as Trump signed legislation to promote women in STEM.
Ivanka Trump also helped orchestrate a women’s business initiative, launching the United States Canada Council for the Advancement of Women Business Leaders and Female Entrepreneurs while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in town last month. And she’s gotten to work building relationships, hosting two private dinner parties with business executives focused on women in the workplace.
First Lady’s Public Appearance Picture Gallery
Melanie Trump at International Women’s Day Luncheon (White House) Wednesday, March 08, 2017
President’s Address to Joint Session of Congress (Washington) Monday, February 28, 2017
Melanie Trump Hosts Governor’s Ball (White House) Sunday, February 26, 2017
Melanie Trump at Trump Campaign Rally (Melbourne FL) Saturday, February 18, 2017
Melanie Trump with Sara Netanyahu (White House) Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Melanie Trump with Akie Abe (Japanese Gardens Delray FL) Saturday, February 11, 2017
Melanie Trump at Super Bowl Party Trump Golf Club (Palm Beach FL) Sunday, February 05, 2017
Melanie Trump at Red Cross Ball (Mar-a-Lago Club) Saturday, February 04, 2017
Melanie Trump with Akie Abe (Japanese Gardens Delray FL) Saturday, February 11, 2017
These 9 photos en scene represent the bulk of readily available Melania rara avis sightings at ceremonial First Lady and Presidential Wife events since the Inauguration (48 days in). Still hunting for more pictures in the Wild to complete the collection. An ongoing project for the curious who want to know..
There has been a relative ramp up in public exposure for the First Lady in the last couple of weeks, Melania wise. But don’t hold your breathe for the next sighting opportunity. Melania’s next major event will be held Monday, April 17 at the traditional White House Easter Egg Roll, according to her staff and scheduler.
That is 6 weeks from now, another 40 days. That will drop her public viewing profile percentage by almost 50%, assuming she doesn’t show up at another one or two Florida golfing vacations in the meantime. So, I suppose that is quite possible, given the President’s demonstrated hunger for golfing time in Florida so far in his young Presidency.
A Parting Comment
Melania seems to be charting her own course around her personal life with Donald, and her newly imposed and unasked for public expectations of participation in his Grand Political Quest.
Her expression of independence should be admired on its own, despite the cost to our national ideas of First Family comity and stability. We have lived through the national trauma of accepting a Catholic President, and a Divorced President already, but not a potential Disintegrating Marriage President as yet. Trump has also given us the first Jewish Family member of the First Family (daughter Ivanka, though she is an adult convert to her religion). That is surely progress of a sort, though it is doubtful most of Trump’s most ardent Alt Right and White Supremacist Uber supporters have snapped to that particular fact yet. They may not be entirely pleased if the knowledge ever sinks in, however hot they may think Ivanka looks.
It is premature to worry about family breakups over living arrangements. Besides, if anyone could make a long distance relationship (of whatever sort) work, it is a billionaire couple. Especially when the Unlimited U.S. Treasury deposits and an army of Secret Service dudes and dudettes are around to smooth travel and foot
100% of the most ridiculous travel bills Trump..45 seems intent on racking up. You know, like the roughly $12-14 million so far in less than 50 days, just for his supernumerary Florida golfing vacations. Not counting the lesser, but still substantial bills incurred by Melania’s galavanting back and forth for her official and ceremonial pop ups, at least 6 or 8 round trips so far.
You know, it would be interesting to apply some sort of deductible or co-payment scheme to Presidential travel costs, in order to ensure the American public is getting the very best quality and affordability for our tax dollars, just as we all face with our doctor’s bills and medical insurance payments. Trump.45’s new health care initiative seems certain to increase the personal financial responsibility on all Americans, regardless of income.
Somehow, it doesn’t seem too much to ask a billionaire (10 times over by his own account) to contribute something approaching his fair share (and not a penny more) to our nation’s common income pool for paying our collective bills, i.e., the U.S Treasury, whether or not he agrees to let us see his tax returns, like every other candidate in modern times. He’s so special to hide his goods, because why?
Anyway, to return to Melania, who has nothing to do with Trump.45’s profiteering, profligate, and dubiously slick business moves, which he has been practicing on everyone for 40 years or more.
It is International Women’s Day today, meant to celebrate progress for women around the world to secure their human rights, independence and personal dignity against oppression, informal and official, so frequently found even in so-called ‘advanced’ countries. It would no doubt be a gaspingly unpleasant surprise for Trump loyalists, inducing the star studded political cadre attending Melania’s hosted International Women’s Luncheon in the White House today, to learn that the celebration of the earliest Women’s Day observance was held on February 28, 1909, in New York and organized by the Socialist Party of America.
From 1914 onwards the celebration date has always ben set for March 8 around the world. On March 8, 1917, in the capital of the Russian Empire, Petrograd, a demonstration of women textile workers began, covering the whole city. This was the beginning of the Russian Revolution. A week later the Czar abdicated, and women were given the right to vote. American women did not get the same right to vote until August 1920. Female suffrage, worker’s rights, socialist politics. Now there’s an agenda that ought to make the Trumpettes gag and spew. And now they have brought it straight into the White House, although unknowingly no doubt. Blithe ignorance of simple history can get you in trouble all right.
Of course, it is super richly ironic that Trump.45, a virtual poster boy for disrespect and misogyny for his entire adult life should Twit out his supposed love and respect for all women this morning, apparently expecting to be taken seriously by women around the country. What a hypocritical turkey.
Trump’s Personal Record With Women He Loved
The point is that there is an actual factual record Trump has compiled with women over 50 years of adult life and shenanigans. Not just a pile of unredeemed and some-day promises, like his political slogans, but the real deal.
As best we can tell, Trump has had three significant long term (intimate) relationships with women during his life. He has married all three, and each has borne him one or more children. All three were models/actresses when he met them, and two were immigrant non-citizens when he met, married, and had a child with them. Both women subsequently became naturalized full American citizens, and are completely welcome here by all right thinking Americans, whatever the immigration whackos may say about immigrants who talk funny.
Trump’s first long term relationship lasted roughly from 1976-1992, or some 16 years. That includes meeting, getting to know her, marriage, bearing children, receiving American citizenship, separation, Trump’s adultery, and final divorce settlement.
Trump’s second long term relationship lasted roughly from 1987-1999, or some 12 years. That includes meeting, getting to know her, bearing a child, marriage, separation, Trump’s adultery, and final divorce settlement.
Trump’s third long term relationship has lasted roughly from 1998-2017, or some 18 years. That includes meeting, getting to know her, marriage, bearing a child, receiving American citizenship, separation, Trump’s adultery, and final divorce settlement.
Do you perceive a common a long term pattern here? Two out of three done and dusted. The third possibly on track with a functional temporary separation of primary living arrangements in progress.
Not to wish any unhappiness to Melania, and especially to young Barron who is a true innocent here and doesn’t deserve whatever blowback his father is about to visit upon him, due to Trump’s unconstrained glutinous appetites for celebrity and power. However, facts is facts, and Facts Are Stubborn Things. Nasty too, sometimes.
Trump is a serial marriage seeker, a serial adulterer, and a serial disrespecter of the three most important women in his life, evidenced by the fact that these are the only three women in the whole world he has chosen to marry and blend his precious gene thing with.
At 18 years and counting (and aging), Trump.45’s current marital relationship is longer than any he has ever sustained before. Melania is strikingly attractive and raising Trump’s minor son to boot, but Trump has bailed on precious young children twice before (at ages 6, 15, 11, and 8). Even younger by a couple years in each case if you go by date of separation, not the final divorce. To a young child the first rupture shock is just as bad or worse than the final split.
All we can say is that Melania is at grave risk and navigating a steep, slippery slope indeed based on Trump.45’s demonstrated factual history. The clock is winding down.
By all accounts, she has done everything asked of her to advance Trump’s megalomania and unlimited ambition, without public complaint or scandal. Presumably she has met all the expected onerous conditions of whatever iron-bound pre-nuptial agreement Trump insisted she sign 12 years ago when they married.
If permanent rupture it is to be, count me among those who hope she takes his sorry ass to the cleaners and then some. It’s only money, and if there is one thing Trump has demonstrated over and over again, it is that he can find a dime or two whenever he needs them.
He will survive. And he will have his Presidential pension and glory days rallies to keep him warm in his elder years and dotage. And Trump.ex45 can always reclaim operational control of the Trump Organization from Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee if he has a mind to, when the time comes.
As for Melania she will be in full control of her person and time and actions, and presumably be well fixed to provide for herself and her child permanently, besides being free of Trump’s antics.
There is a residual sympathy left for young master Barron, who may be a rich kid, but a kid nonetheless. He doesn’t deserve the drama that will undoubtedly be visited upon him. I hope he doesn’t get too screwed up in the process. As for the other four of Trump’s adult children, it should be no big deal a second time, since they have already gone through the whole thing all one or twice before.
As for the rest of the country, whatever the Trumpian end game turns out to be, divorce, sullen togetherness, or a miraculous full renewal of love and affection, at least we have seen this sort of stuff before, and know how to handle it. It will just be a grand reality TV show soap opera, with characters we all know, and much better ratings than The Apprentice could ever have hoped to achieve.
Amen
From the Wiktionary entry for rara avis:
Etymology
Latin rāra avis (“rare bird”), plural rarae aves
From Juvenal’s Satires (6.165): Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cycno (“a bird as rare upon the earth as a black swan”).
Noun
rara avis (plural rara avises or rarae aves)
A rare or unique person or thing.
That Parsons girl is quite the rara avis if you ask me.
Three digital fractal art pieces by by zweeZwyy:
http://zweezwyy.deviantart.com/art/Spot-On-273540770
Spot On
http://zweezwyy.deviantart.com/art/Rara-avis-208298660
Rara Avis
http://zweezwyy.deviantart.com/art/Button-Up-282994502
Button Up