A key congressional committee on Monday released a note and sexually suggestive drawing containing what appeared to be Donald J. Trump’s signature that was included in a book for the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003 — a drawing that Mr. Trump has insisted he did not create.
And The Washington Post...
... Democrats on the committee released portions of the book — including a suggestive picture and note allegedly drawn by President Donald Trump when he and Epstein were friends.
A nude is suggestive? A line drawing of a nude???
Cover your eyes, children, we're in the Henri Matisse gallery!
When Henri — or Donald — speaks without clumsiness, directly to the mind of the spectator, what does he suggest?
When a nude purportedly drawn by Donald Trump is called "suggestive" in the NYT or the Washington Post, we're supposed to think that the message is... what? Rape this?
संदेश
50 टिप्पणियां:
Is it necessary to point out that not everyone gets the same suggestion? Yes. Yes it is. Those that seem to always get the wrong suggestion need to be reminded.
Female nudes are suggestive that biological women are inherently different than biological men, and thereby suggestive that transgender claptrap is claptrap.
NYT: Prudish when there's an outside chance that a story will hurt Trump. Blind, forgiving, and duplicitous about all things sexual when it potentially hurts the DEI crowd or anyone in NYC other than Trump.
You have just about run out of excuses to ignore Donald Trump's treatment of women. How is Trump different from the horndog Bill Clinton, who you despise?
Democrats are led by predatory men like Joe Biden and servile females like Kamala Harris. Bill Clinton is a known rapist.
Democrats want to pretend that everyone is as deranged and evil as they are.
Freder Frederson said...
You have just about run out of excuses to ignore Donald Trump's treatment of women. How is Trump different from the horndog Bill Clinton, who you despise?
This post couldn't be more illustrative of the moral degeneracy, stupidity, and lack of self awareness of the average Democrat voter.
Breaking: That is a Trump drawing not a Matisse.
The authorities are on their way to arrest Trump.
@Freder, you wouldn’t understand any answer.
Am I being accused of despising Bill Clinton??
He's the FIRST presidential candidate I voted for who won and the ONLY presidential candidate I voted for twice.
I argued at the time against impeaching him. And I voted for his wife in 2016.
The first election I voted in was 1972.
Picasso Suite 347 (browse with google images) a mild one
Trump's (if it is his) is a cool drawing, first impression is pubic hair then you see it's a signature on a nude. Too artistic for Trump?
I suspect that before the invention of the camera, nudes served the same function as pornography. I remember reading a scene in Bronte's novel Villette that took place in an art gallery. The heroine was observing how men flocked to a nude painting of Cleopatra. Then there's this cartoon from the 18th century that also gives that impression:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/354229
Ann Althouse said...
Am I being accused of despising Bill Clinton??
He's the FIRST presidential candidate I voted for who won and the ONLY presidential candidate I voted for twice.
I argued at the time against impeaching him. And I voted for his wife in 2016.
This is a testament to the conditioning of women in our society.
Ann Althouse voted for a known rapist twice.
Women in this country are groomed from a very young age to support policies and relationships that let rich powerful predatory men take advantage of them.
Feminine form. It's the swirl on the left breast that implies a soft innuendo, a sheer projection.
If you are a heterosexual male with high free testosterone, anything close to representing the female form is suggestive. Men are triggered visually.
Take it easy, Achilles. You were just a kid during the Clinton administration and don't know what you are talking about.At the height of the impeachment of Bill Clinton he reached his peak of popularity equally among men and women. The gender gap closed after his impeachment.
Early 2001: As he left office in January 2001, Clinton's final approval rating was 66%, the highest exit approval rating of any president since World War II at the time. This rating was also consistent across both genders, indicating no significant popularity breakdown between men and women at the very end of his second term.
PS: I voted for Perot twice and couldn't stand the forked tongued devil in real time.
To today's standards of governance - Bill Clinton would be considered a radical Rightwinger. He did govern from the middle and worked with the R-party.
No desperate immature hate filled paddles held up at his speeches.
The way people are going to in order to rationalize Trump's relationship with Epstein are incredible to me. They were friends, Epstein is clearly a sex criminal, Trump is well known as at least a lecherous person and has been found guilty of sexual assault (which I know many people here don't believe, but a jury did), Trump sent notes to Epstein clearly referencing their sexual interests.
At the very least Trump knew about the sorts of things Epstein was doing. At the worst, he actively participated in them.
There's a difference between being a pussyhound and a kiddie rapist.
@Sydney: "I suspect that before the invention of the camera, nudes served the same function as pornography."
Suspect no more, just check out the explicit porn on ancient Greek vases. Just check out the art recently uncovered in Pompei. Just check out the ancient Roman statues in the Vatican museum. Just check out a bunch of ancient Indian temples. Just check out...
"How is Trump different from the horndog Bill Clinton ...?"
It seems to me that Trump, unlike Bill Clinton, is not attracted to pathological sex, to very young women with no real understanding of life who simply throw themselves at powerful men like Monica Lewinsky or to young girls ready to take drugs and party with older men like the denizens of Epstein's Island. Trump always seems to prefer women who have enough life in them to move off that low level of interaction, who can make men chase them and who can choose. This is what Ivanka and Melania are like. After all, Trump doesn't do drugs and isn't habitually grabbing the first passing body as he is on the verge of passing out.
He wouldn't like thin neurotic New Yorkers like Jean Carroll either, stalkers, disgusted by their prey.
It's useless to try to counteract a Dem Narr with a bit of reality because the whole point is that the promoters of Narrs don't believe in what they're saying; it's just a way to damage political enemies. For this reason Trump has required of his whole Cabinet the ability to handle media-enabled Dem Narrs. That's as much a requirement as understanding economics, education, immigration, foreign policy or war. And I guess us Trump supporters are people who know there's Narrs out there prowling while the regular people who oppose Trump simply cannot bring themselves to believe that the NYT or CBS or their favorite influencer would propagandize like Pravda in the Fifties. They think there must be something to a story that's always in the media. That's the difference.
In early years of the 21st century Trump revitalized the Republican party with big policy moves while the Democrats kicked out the Jews and tried to substitute media Narrs in their place - that's what history will consider to be the naked truth about the politics of our time.
Clinton had a charismatic, disarming personality, which appealed to many men and women. His approval benefited from a false economic boom and published deceptions about foreign policies and achievements. He was the very model of misogynistic pride and affirmative action that fueled feminist antagonism and purported angst. Safe and rare, indeed.
Althouse, I think you have a different kind of life experience than most on this. Playboys on the coffee table, life drawing classes, dull a person to the usual suggestivity for people who really don't see nudity all that often. And like others above, I think for many artists (not all as I'm not doubting your sensitivities) the suggestiveness is certainly the draw, the art of it a way around the usual rules: the idea a nude woman on a wall in a museum isn't really nude and a painter is only interested in the shape not the sex. Meanwhile, many actual artists show a lot more tendency of being suggestible about such things.
More, whatever a nude in a museum implies or doesn't suggest, a nude picture in a Epstein book cannot be viewed in a vacuum or as a coffee table Matisse volume. He trafficked underage girls for sexual purposes. That's not suggestive, that's fact, and nudity in the context of celebrating Epstein is always going to imply his illegal corrupt lifestyle.
Not every nude is suggestive, but that one by Matisse sure is.
IF it is Trump's drawing, which is still unproven, it is suggestive of a fashion rack or display manikin (no arms etc.).
Jeez I haven't seen that word in years. Spelling looks wrong.
The feminine form and aesthetic appeal are neither a mystery nor a controversy. The art of moderation is a common male... human quality and skill reinforced through social conventions.
Freder Frederson said...
You have just about run out of excuses to ignore Donald Trump's treatment of women.
Hall of Fame level stupid, even for him. Tell us Freder what other men in public life need excuses made for them. Also when and where were any excuses for his ACTUAL behavior ever made on this blog?
Real acts by him, not the fantasy rape of F Jean Carrol or the nutjob who claimed he raped her on a full airliner! How did he treat actual women that was anything like the "bimbo eruption" clown car of Clinton?
"Spelling looks wrong." Is.
I wonder is Picasso did one on the vulva that works like his face style. It would probably go under humor rather than the suggestive but who knows.
I remember some woman sending Limbaugh a vulva cookie and podcast people telling him that he was holding it upside-down.
N.B. I am not one of the Narrs described by wildswan@934AM.
I am a Narr who agrees with the BFD interpretation. Vulgar rich playboys being vulgar rich playboys as from time immemorial, yet here in 2025 we have people clutching their pearls.
Hardin: Dr Oz had a giant cloth quilt vulva on his show one time. He had WOMEN from the studio audience come up and try to recite the nomenclature of their own genitalia, or just identify parts as he pointed to them. None could. RR, JSM
@Narr:
Those clutching their pearls are the same ones who say "sex worker" rather than "prostitute," and push for "sex positivity." These same pearl clutchers once named a lesbian-focused restaurant the "Bearded Clam." They had affairs with JFK, Bill Clinton, slept their way to the top with Harvey Weinstein, etc.
Their pearls must have been crushed flat by now.
mannequin
‘Suggestive’ means to convey a hint or to imply something. In this case Trump [allegedly] drawing a nude for Epstein is suggestive of what he knows about Epstein’s sexual predilections and about their relationship. So the meaning of a Trump nude to Epstein on his birthday has a ‘wink wink’ quality and is different than the meaning of Matisse drawing a nude of one of his models in which he is presenting a nude form to the buying public. If Trump had drawn a nude to sell or to give it to his wife it would clearly have a different meaning.
Re Trump's signature as the woman's pubic hair: I thought of the Billy Collin's poem "Instructions to the Artist." Last verse:
Some final recommendations:
I should like to appear hatless.
Kindly limit your palette to a single
primary color, any one but red or blue.
Sign the painting on my upper lip
so your name will always be my mustache.
Manikin is perfectly cromulent.
jsm mentions Dr Oz's prop, which reminds me of the time when liberal women were parading around proudly in pussy hats.
Whatever happened to pussy hats?
https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/instructions-to-the-artist-poem-by-billy-collins/
Suggestive is a notch below titillating.
If only both had spelled it 'sugestive'.
"Suggestive is a notch below titillating"
Now THAT is splendid.
Howard said...
Take it easy, Achilles. You were just a kid during the Clinton administration and don't know what you are talking about.At the height of the impeachment of Bill Clinton he reached his peak of popularity equally among men and women. The gender gap closed after his impeachment.
I voted for Perot.
I remember my mother telling us that they were just trying to get Bill Clinton and the scandal wasn’t that serious. I remember trying to figure out what they were talking about and I read what Broderick said.
By 1996 I told everyone that said they were voting for Clinton what Broderick said he did to her. People were always using excuses.
Everyone knew.
Has anyone ever found any [other] drawing by DJT of anything, ever?
One would think that if Trump liked to draw or even doodle we would know about it. He'd tell us about them--terrific, everyone loves them, the best.
How is Trump different from the horndog Bill Clinton, who you despise?
For starters, he never had an intern - approximately the same age as his daughter - give him a blowjob in the Oval Office?
And then commit perjury and obstruction of justice in the process? All the while waving his finger at the nation insisting there was no sex involved?
How's that for starters?
There's no nipples on the "Trump drawing", whereas there are on the "nude".
So whoever called the "Trump drawing" a "nude" is a lying sack of shit
How is Trump different from the horndog Bill Clinton, who you despise?
Clinton used the police to drag women in for him to sexually abuse. Clinton went after an intern. He is a low life scumbag who goes after the weak and defenseless for his own sexual gratification.
Trump? Trump's accused of hiring a porn actress to have sex with him. If you can't see a difference between that, and using State troopers to drag in Paula jones to give him a blow job, you're a pathetically fucked up individual.
From what I can tell, the worst that Trump can be reasonable accused of is that he's a horn dog who finds women who are willing to trade their tits for his tat, and he engages with them. Which is entirely different from forcing yourself on people, like Clinton repeatedly did.
No, E Jean Carole is not even remotely credible. She claims that she and two+ female friends all discussed that "Trump assault" on her at the time it happened, but NONE of them can give a day, week, month, season, or even YEAR that it happened.
Why?
Because they're lying. And because they feared that if they gave any specificity to when the attack supposedly occurred, Trump would be able to pull out his calendar and show that it couldn't have happened when they said it did.
There is only one reason why an accuser refuses ti pin down the date the crime took place: it's because it never took place
I suspect that before the invention of the camera, nudes served the same function as pornography.
Indeed. Some of it was really well done and really explicit. Jean-Léon Gérôme, Gustave Courbet, and Paul Avril come to mind.
The nude line drawing shown here is not shown in Epstein's birthday card, so what is the point about Henri Matisse who has been dead for 70 years?
Let’s take a closer look at those drawings by Matisse and Trump and notice the meaningful difference between them.
The New York Times is being too kind to Trump, as is the Washington Post when it says the birthday message “appears inside the contours of a woman’s body.”
Also having taken my share of live drawing classes, let me tell you the novelty wears off real fast. You have 55 minutes to complete the assignment which means you better have something on paper.
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