June 12, 2018

"Melania’s lengthy disappearance was more a matter of degree than of kind. She has always been missing, in an existential way...."

"What’s more, the fact that the mystery was medical only amplified the usual effect: To wonder what was wrong with the First Lady’s health is to think about her internal body, her interiority. Medical matters force us to think about people’s inner human functioning. By denying us even the most minimally plausible account of the First Lady’s illness and treatment, the Trump administration denied us her physical reality, confirming instead her status as pure surface, a two-dimensional being, devoid of flesh and blood — not unlike the projected shadows and light of which film heroines are made. In her immateriality, Melania well represents the status of women under Trump — absent, frozen out, erased from the picture. This applies of course not only to those women within the administration, but to the way women in general are perceived: As inessential blank spaces, their humanity and concerns easily erased."

From "Melania’s Recent Behavior Is Right Out of Hitchcock The lady vanishes" by Rhonda Garelick (The Cut). Garelick is an English professor, and she is representing the status of women within English departments — present, heated up, inscribed.

79 comments:

exhelodrvr1 said...

"Melania well represents the status of women under Trump "

You mean like Ivanka Kushner, KellyAnne Conway, and Nikki Haley?

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

Melania well represents the status of women under Trump — absent, frozen out, erased from the picture. This applies of course not only to those women within the administration, but to the way women in general are perceived: As inessential blank spaces, their humanity and concerns easily erased

Hey Garelick, show me how fast you can erase my humanity and concerns if I tell you I voted for Trump.

Ron said...

It'a too early for that much bullroar....ugh!

Heartless Aztec said...

I always steered clear of the English depts in the schools I worked in - unless I dating one of them.

Whatever you say said...

Thanks to Samantha Bee, every time I hear or read something by a moronic feminist all I can think is you are a stupid-word-that-should-never-be-said-aloud. I am amazed that we aren't hearing about more examples of spontaneous human combustion. These people are burning up inside with idiotic hate.

Ambrose said...

Such drivel passes for cleverness these days.

FIDO said...

I stopped at English Professor.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

The only women who count as present and included are the ones who line up to be told what their self-interest is.

P.S. what kind of English professor repeats the same word in two adjacent sentences? Doesn't she own a vocabulary, or barring that, a thesaurus?

FIDO said...

Surfed:

'Dating' seems insufficient for such abuse unless many other -ings were also amply involved.

MathMom said...

Just wondering...does Rhonda Garelick speak 6 languages? I think two, perhaps. English and Mean Girl.

Phil 314 said...

Please make it stop!

LordSomber said...

That paragraph could only come from a bloviating English professor, with their geometric logic and whatnot.

Kate said...

Melania is a homemaker. Of course the professional feminists erase her by saying that a man is erasing her.

The Bergall said...

What in the hell is she talking about?

gspencer said...

Melanie v. her predecessor,

http://www.barenakedislam.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/13240681_893805859246_6725530230194552428_n.jpg

rehajm said...

There’s a special place in Hell for women who use creative writing to coerce other wonen.

Tank said...

As Dennis Prager would say, "You have to have a PhD, or at least a Masters, to be so foolish."

rehajm said...

It’s like there’s some kind of distress call in code buried somewhere in that dreck.

Temujin said...

Or, Melania might just not want to 'play' First Lady. There's always that sane possibility.

So glad I went to school in the 70s. Professors seem particularly vapid and insulated these days. Not sure that a degree has any real meaning or worth anymore. I studied English back in the day. The reading lists were long and fantastic. Today's lists, I imagine, would be horrifying and funneled down into the most narrow viewpoint. The purpose not being good literature, but right thinking.

David Begley said...

"First Lady’s health is to think about her internal body, her interiority."

Yes, let's talk about Hillary's interiority back in the day and now today.

Tcdq1293 said...

This is a great example of "Althouse reads so you don't have to."

Clyde said...

How sad for her, having to write articles about people she so obviously despises, stuck in flyover country surrounded by hayseed Trump voters, even with her Yale education. Oh, the ignominy of it all!

Otto said...

Ugly old wordsmith feminist from Brooklyn who's fantasy is to have slept with a dashing millionaire on his private jet ala Melania. Her overuse of "in" prefix words is annoying and misses the mark.
In my day we would call her a bullsh*t artist, but today they call her a creative artist.

MaxedOutMama said...

Nutty Professors are certainly well represented these days. One has to get really outrageous nowadays to achieve nutty-professordom print recognition.

I don't know whether to congratulate the hapless author for achieving her goal, however worthless it objectively is, or to pity her for banging together this mental ghetto and moving into it.

rhhardin said...

She wants more of a Melania soap opera so women can relate.

Rob said...

Professor Garelick can’t help it. She has swum so long in the pretentious bullshit of literary criticism that she lacks the ability to crawl out of the muck and think or write decently. Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.

Big Mike said...

Rhonda Garelick (The Cut)

First time I read that my eyes put an ‘n’ where an ‘n’ is not supposed to go.

buwaya said...

From what I've seen, this professor is a rather good representative of her kind.
And the generation that is waiting to replace her is different only in degree.

jwl said...

"...but to the way women in general are perceived: As inessential blank spaces, their humanity and concerns easily erased."

I wonder if men accused in #metoo era would agree with idea that female concerns are easily ignored.

Fernandinande said...

Right Out of Hitchcock The lady vanishes

Hitchcock's films were written, edited and assembled over nearly a hundred years. They contain the most influential stories of mankind. Knowledge of those films is essential to a deep understanding of Western culture, which is in turn vital to proper psychological health (as human beings are cultural animals) and societal stability. These films are neither history, as we commonly conceive it, nor empirical science. Instead, they are investigations into the structure of Being itself and calls to action within that Being. They have deep psychological significance.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

She has every right to vanish. The hack press can suck it.

Remember when we had 2 for 1 during the Clinton? Yeah - nobody appreciated that. Had Hillary vanished during Bill's reign we might not all hate her like we do.

Henry said...

...the Trump administration denied us...

There's that false causation again.

...the Trump administration denied us...flesh and blood

The left is voracious. Melania refuses to be devoured.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Misplaced pants @ 7:04.

Nothing left to say after that. Boom.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Women live in chains now! it's horrible! It's the handmade's tale everywhere.

Sebastian said...

"In her immateriality, Melania well represents the status of women under Trump — absent, frozen out, erased from the picture."

Nikki, Betsy, Ivanka -- erased from the picture by prog condescension.

"This applies of course not only to those women within the administration, but to the way women in general are perceived: As inessential blank spaces, their humanity and concerns easily erased."

This must be the first time anyone linked Trump with viewing women as inessential.

Bill R said...

I got about 10 words into that and thought "college professor who needs to be told to get a job". Then I finished the whole thing and thought exactly the same thing.

Hey, University of Nebraska, There's a TRO (Tuition Reduction Opportunity) here.

Danno said...

Ms. Garelick is not much of a "perfesser", but she is one hell of a gossip.

Shouting Thomas said...

All feminism is Marxism. The aggregation of women into a class with a grievance against men is Marxism.

And, of course, the Marxist feminists, like Althouse, all like to claim they were elected by women to represent them.

Shouting Thomas said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Darrell said...

Melania was taking care of her ailing mother after she got out of the hospital herself. Somebody had the comprehensive details.

Darrell said...

You know who was a real bastard toward women? Hillary. Paid them even less than normal, too.

Michael K said...

“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”

― George Orwell

These days, I'm not sure the English Professors qualify as intellectuals.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

You know who was a real bastard toward women? Hillary. Paid them even less than normal, too.


But they loved it. Because loyalty.

Anonymous said...

Are English departments these days staffed by anyone but curtain-twitching catladies afflicted with festering sexual neuroses?

Gahrie said...

Melania well represents the status of women under Trump — absent, frozen out, erased from the picture.

As stated above: Ivanka, Nikki and Kellyanne show this to be a lie. Add in Sarah and Betsy. What is "absent, frozen out, erased from the picture" is carping, Leftwing, politics of identity.

chickelit said...

I’d wager that Garelick is just upset that she’s stuck at a midwestern university instead of an east coast one. I’ve seen so many resentful academics like that in my lifetime. I can smell them a mile away. I could write a novel about them.

MadisonMan said...

Garelick writes: Medical matters force us to think about people’s inner human functioning.

They don't force anything of the kind, actually, unless you are very nosy.

daskol said...

Yup. She's got issues. Rhonda, not Melania.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

You're not a real woman or a real black unless you're an angry plantation-dwelling mind-numbed progressive.

Hooray Big wasteful government who cares!

JAORE said...

Back in the day my college English classes included teaching us to use words to communicate concepts clearly and directly.

But was I short changed.

Browndog said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Browndog said...

LordSomber said...

That paragraph could only come from a bloviating English professor, with their geometric logic and whatnot.


That paragraph could come from 22% of the population...easily.

Michael K said...


Blogger MadisonMan said...
Garelick writes: Medical matters force us to think about people’s inner human functioning.


That's why a chance to cut is a chance to cure.

Earnest Prole said...

When Garbo said "I want to be left alone," it was understood as a feminist statement of independence. Melania wants the right to make the same choice.

Big Mike said...

All feminism is Marxism. The aggregation of women into a class with a grievance against men is Marxism.

Third wave feminism, maybe a form of Marxism. Trump is a second wave feminist -- women working for him have a fair chance to show what they can do, but if they screw up they're gone just as fast as any man who screws up. A second wave feminist would applaud that -- or certainly should, if she's a true second wave feminist.

Quaestor said...

Garelick is an English professor.

We all know what that means, or we should. Read any paper published in PMLA over the last decade or two, I dare you. H. P. Lovecraft invented an ancient tome he called the Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred which was so rabid and blasphemous that to read but a single page within was to hazard madness. Poor cosseted, lonely Howard, he had no idea his fictional abhorred book could pale beside something real created by intellectuals. Anyone, but particularly a woman, who is an English professor should be treated with caution, like a paranoid schizophrenic prone to violent outbursts. An alarmingly high proportion of that class are certifiable, no joke. If you should meet one in the flesh don't meet her glaze eye to eye, that's like starring at a silverback gorilla. And don't turn your back.

Ye gods, what passes for scholarship today... It should come as no surprise that meritocracy is now decreed a mortal sin.

cacimbo said...

Melania, like Ivana runs successful businesses in addition to being a mother/wife. Trump has a long history of hiring women - long before it was the norm in construction. Nothing seems to infuriate self proclaimed lefty feminists more than women actually being treated like equals.

YoungHegelian said...

Derrida is like a 50 cal machine gun.

You don't just let any asshole who wants to use it, use it.

hombre said...

The lunatics from the media and academe prattle on as Trump’s Presidency continues to expose the intellectual and moral corrosion of the left.

As the speech, voting patterns and behavior of so many women become more and more unhinged, I am beginning to view mi esposa, wife, mother, former judge and lawyer with suspicion. Is she really the same gender as these irresponsible, sexist fruitcakes?

In desperation I turned to Merriam-Webster. Gender: “2. a : sex - the feminine gender b : the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex.”

Holy Toledo! What about physical traits? Irrelevant? Then who are the real women and what are the others? RH, a little help here, please!

Skippy Tisdale said...

Who writes this shit?

William said...

Melania and Ivanka married well, dress well, and are strikingly good looking. It's hard for the mean girls to get much traction. You've got to admire the the effort though. I don't think anyone has ever thought of the phenomenal resemblance Margaret Rutherford and Melania share when you examine their interiorality.......Sanders presents a larger target. I admire the way woke feminists draw attention to her weight by using subtle metaphors.

Sigivald said...

It's great watching how Trump lives in her head, rent free, 24/7.

(By great I mean "schadenfreudetastic", since I can't stand that sort of postmodernist "whatever I decide as an interpretation is Pure Fact because shut up" blather.

I don't give a damn about the President either way, and neither should any grown-ass adult.)

JaimeRoberto said...

Being first lady would be a horrible existence. I'd want to disappear too.

traditionalguy said...

Melania is a 100% authentic Christian person. She just has a sensitive female soul. Which is desperately needed by a man like Donald Trump. Ergo: she is a key part of Trump's support system. Therefore that must be attacked continually by lying witches until she dies. This witch just proclaimed that Melania would die on the inside.

Yancey Ward said...

This is missing a tag.

n.n said...

"Melania well represents the status of women under Trump"

Melania is more woman than woman.

Then there is Gina Haspel, Sarah Huckabee Sanders,... feminine strong. You can be both.

n.n said...

Melania is a 100% authentic Christian person. She just has a sensitive female soul. Which is desperately needed by a man like Donald Trump.

Equal in rights and complementary in Nature.

n.n said...

Melania is a homemaker.

Someone has to do it. It increases retained earnings (capitalism), improves quality of life (moral and natural imperatives), and leaves time for community affairs, creative impulses, babies and other human lives, etc. You can take turns. You can share responsibilities. The synthesis of a couple.

n.n said...

Medical matters force us to think about people’s inner human functioning.

It happens, we strive, we prosper. We do not obsess to the point of reducing a human life to her function or to a colorful clump of cells.

Michael K said...

When I see these things I always look for a photo of the writer.

It says a lot.

Jim at said...

"Help me!" - Rhonda

Openidname said...

The writing of academics -- Althouse always excepted -- has descended into gibberish.

Most people present only their exterior. That doesn't make them "pure surface, a two-dimensional being, devoid of flesh and blood." They have an obvious physical presence.

The only difference with Melania is that she happened to be sick, so arguably there was some reason to discuss her interior. But she isn't obligated to do so, and she doesn't suddenly become some kind of wraith just because she chooses not to.

Or do we all have to carry around our x-rays and colonoscopy videos now?

BUMBLE BEE said...

Rhonda Garelic reeks of heaviosity.

n.n said...

carry around our x-rays and colonoscopy videos now?

Ostensibly, pre-existing conditions are no longer a factor. Also, there is the matter of privacy, the whole person, etc.

#NoJudgment, #SelectiveJudgment; #NoLabels, #TooManyLabels; etc. with the establishment of Pro-Choice and progress of political congruence.

Saint Croix said...

In The Lady Vanishes the lady is abducted, for fuck's sake.

Matt said...

That is one of the most retarded paragraphs I have ever read.

This is an English professor, you say?

Kirk Parker said...

Great Ghu, the projection is strong in this one.

And glad to see someone managed to mention Gina Haspell.




chickelit,

"I could write a novel about them."

Oh no no No NO NO!!!

glenn said...

Rhonda forgot to say “Tuck Frump”