"Betty Ford’s 'The Times of My Life' was a groundbreaking confessional that changed the country’s understanding of addiction. At best, a first lady’s memoir is an important historical document, intimately chronicling a White House administration and the powerful man running it. At worst — whoops, Nancy Reagan is calling in the astrologers again. So where does 'Melania' — a plain-black-covered book written by a woman who rightly assumes she needs no other introduction — fall into this pantheon? Let’s check: 'Over the next few months, we developed several items: the Fluid Day Serum, the Luxe Night with Vitamins A and E, cleansing balm, and an exfoliating peel, all priced between $50 and $150. In my meetings with chemists, I discovered the rejuvenating properties of caviar.'"
Writes Monica Hesse, in "In the pantheon of first lady memoirs, Melania Trump’s is something else/The dominant theme of 'Melania' is one of graceful grievance" (WaPo).
October 9, 2024
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It seems -- well, silly -- to compare a modern-day wife to Eleanor Roosevelt (80+ years ago) and Betty Ford (50+ years ago). Times are a little different now.
Feminism is the accursed plague ideology of our era. It has caused men and women to hate one another, driven generations of young women into cat lady lives, and it’s the foundation of the stupid, ghastly identity politics that is destroying us. Like communism, feminism is essentially the work of the devil. So, I’ll take Melania, a woman who spends her time making herself attractive to men, over a feminist she-devil.
Considering Western women are the primary consumers of the multibillion dollar global cosmetics industry, why are WaPo journalists so touchy about a woman who can succeed in that industry? Just kidding, I know why.
What floors me is that the New York/ DC media has no idea how to weaken Melania's loyalty to Trump. None. She's an advertisement for the MGTOW expatriate movement. Get a hotter more loyal wife TODAY! But if you think that way, suddenly your female countrymen become adversaries at best, targets at worst. Hey, your cute foreign wife would enjoy seeing them brutalized.
Oooh. Actually starting to see how the "WAHMEN ISSUES" crowd would want to avoid that. Hmm.
"...(Hillary Clinton, who simply will not be stopped, is responsible for four on her own)..."
Ummm. Well...... she's already been stopped, thank God, and reduced to a parenthetical aside in your own article - as well as in the rest of the political and actual worlds. Thank goodness for real-time reckonings.
It's not often that you see a book review so full of catty snark that the writer shoots herself in the foot in the first paragraph.
Dogg, times have not even changed. Eleanor made her bones speaking for her far more popular husband. Back then she could never parlay that into a Senate seat or cabinet post, simply because she was so ugly. OOGLY. There are few First Ladies more overrated than Eleanor Roosevelt, and the fact that no man (including Bill Clinton AND her own husband) would marry Eleanor over Melania Trump absolutely rips feminists up inside.
Sure, Nancy Reagan and the astrologer.
Any mention of Hillary Clinton and her encounters with the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt?
Maybe she's not doing it for "men," but because she likes being attractive and helping other women to be attractive.
I would imagine that by Jan 6 Melania had been asked so many times over the years to denounce something or other to do with the Trump Administration that she stopped paying attention.
Seems like we shouldn't hold Melania's lack of an alcohol problem against her.
They're all written for women.
"The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt" may have reinforced her legacy as a quote machine, but no more so than "Talladega Nights" did:
"America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed." - Eleanor Roosevelt, 1936
I've never read Eleanor's biography. Did she mention anything about the little house FDR had built at the estate for her lesbian room mate ?
Jeez, more Mean Girl shit.
I expect that Monica Hesse has had a hard life, with very little to show for it. Poor thing. Rode hard, put up wet. As they say about horses.
not gonna read her book but it sounds, from the excerpt, like they are bad mouthing her cosmetics.
They don't sound any worse than 99% of the worthless cosmetics out there.
Not worthless to me, I've made a fair amount of money off of them over the years. But I have never understood why women are so foolish as to spend money on this stuff.
John Henry
The Eli Lilly plant in Carolina PR used to make Elizabeth Arden Night Cream. I was working with them quoting some new machinery and they gave me a 5 gallon pail for testing.
I get it home, my wife asks what it is and I tell her. She shows me a small jar, perhaps an ounce or 2 and tells me she pays $30 for it at Penneys. (Early 90s)
So I rinse out a milk bottle and pour off a gallon for her. If she used a jar a month, it should have been a 12 year supply. It lasted perhaps a month.
"It is just not the same." she told me and went back to the $30 jars. No amount of explaining that it came straight out of the filling machine, same as the stuff going in the jars, made any impression.
Lots of women and perhaps even more men, spend godawful sums on Chanel #5 perfume. If they realized where it is made (Humacao PR, now Passaic NJ) and how, would they? In the 90s Chanel paid the glass supplier about $15 for each jar. Cost of the perfume as about 50 cents. Selling price was $40-50.
John Henry
Me either. OTOH, Collier and Horowitz did a great series of books in the 80s looking at famous families. Rockefeller, Kennedy, Fonda and Roosevelt. I recommend them if you can find them.
The one on Roosevelts covered both branches, TR and FDR and I don't think I had realized how distantly related they were before I read the book. Not even the same pronunciation of the name. But FDR rode that pony for all it was worth.
The real family connection was that Eleanor was TR's niece.
The book had somewhat about Eleanor. Enough that I didn't think she was interesting enough to read more about.
I seem to recall that it did mention the lesbian roomate of long standing.
John Henry
Pretty much everyone from that neck of the woods had a hard life. Still does.
I was pretty heavy into speed for a while in the 60s. It probably would have killed me if I had not gone into the Navy.
We are still into speed. Look at all the kiddies being prescribed speed. (amphetamines, brand name Adderall)
John Henry
Amazon shipped the wife's copy without a speck of dunnage in a box about 4 times the book's size. Rattling all the way.
Reckon they don't like Melania or their customer base. Real chickenshit.
WaPo celebrates Diversity (i.e. class-disordered ideologies).
Many female Tiktok-ers do their spiels while applying more makeup than I thought was done by a Broadway star.
They're trying to land Chadwick Raoul Pookuetin III.
Hesse is a fake feminist ridiculing a successful businesswoman for marketing to other women.
They also hated Governor Palin, who should have been our first Alaskan President.
I have read that Rihanna and Jessica Alba are both billionaires and that their wealth derives from the cosmetic lines they introduced. Apparently that's where the big money is. I don't think such a venue would work for Hillary or Eleanor Roosevelt, but it definitely has possibilities for Melania. There's an old saying: making a billion dollars is the best revenge......Has anyone ever actually read the memoirs of a First Lady. I thought they were published and sold only to supporters of their respective spouses. Do people actually read them?
Who cares? She is doing no harm, unlike many others, like Hillary, Jackie Kennedy, and Rosalyn Carter, that retard fascist-worshipper who helped Jim Jones murder 700 people.
Or that thieving lazy hag Michelle Obama who expected no less than 400K a year for a no-show taxpayer-funded job once Obama became a Senator.
The Kremlin on Wednesday confirmed a report that former President Trump sent Russian President Vladimir Putin COVID-19 testing equipment during the height of the pandemic.
Why it matters: The Trump campaign categorically denied new revelations in journalist Bob Woodward's new book "War," which renewed scrutiny of the relationship between Putin and the Republican presidential nominee. lie must be at least 3500 by now LIES AND GETS FACT CHECKED BY PEOPLE HE LIED ABOUT ...oH THAT HURTS,,,BUT NOOT HIM OR HIS magas
The Kremlin on Wednesday confirmed a report that former President Trump sent Russian President Vladimir Putin COVID-19 testing equipment during the height of the pandemic.
Why it matters: The Trump campaign categorically denied new revelations in journalist Bob Woodward's new book "War," which renewed scrutiny of the relationship between Putin and the Republican presidential nominee.
The WaPo shows its venality by having some know-nothing "journalism" bachelor's degree holder attempting to ridicule an accomplished woman whose fluency in five languages already places her head and shoulders above most American journalists and media biz apparatchiks.
What an embarrassment, notwithstanding that those people are incapable of shame.
I like that the spunky old bird carried a revolver in her purse. Somewhere on the Internet I saw the concealed weapons permit she was issued by the State of New York.
Within a decade, I bet good money there will be a movie or documentary on Jill Biden's role (as shadow President) and it will be painted as a wonderful feminist story, as well as sympathetic to the sad senile president. The undemocratic nature of it all (by an admin who claimed their primary job was to 'save democracy' and claimed even more loudly 'how dare you' question Biden's fitness for the job) will be swept under the rug. You know it's going to happen.
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