Posted on 04/27/2018 1:30:59 PM PDT by Kaslin
This has been the fortnight of the first ladies. Last week, the focus was on two former first ladies, one through mourning and fond admiring recollections, and one through yet another book of scathing analytical criticism. Barbara Bush was celebrated for her blunt dignity. Hillary Clinton was recalled for her campaign of blunt excuses for her own failures.
In death, Bush was praised as an old-fashioned matriarch speaking her mind with a sharp tongue, loved by family and lauded as the wife of one president and the mother of another. In life, Clinton has never been at home in the role of "wife of," and she took pride in not being the kind of wife and mother who stayed home and baked cookies. She yearned for an Oval Office of her own and blames everyone but herself for not getting there.
"They were never going to let me be president," Amy Chozick quoted Clinton as saying in "Chasing Hillary," a biography on her coverage of the 2016 Clinton campaign for The New York Times. "They," Chozick reports, included the "vast right-wing conspiracy," piggy forms of patriarchy, Wisconsin voters, former FBI Director James Comey and "white suburban women who would rather vote for a man who bragged about sexual assault than a woman who seemed an affront to who they were." The former first lady includes all the political reporters left and right with "big egos and no brains" who hounded her with questions about her emails.
It's not fair, perhaps, to make first ladies public figures, a role in nearly all cases they did not choose and was thrust upon them whether they liked it or not by virtue of the man they married. The exception is Clinton who, always ambitious for political power, set out to use the role as a stepping stone to the U.S. Senate, secretary of state and, ultimately, the Oval Office.
From Martha Washington onward, the ladies adapted to marriage with a president by living out promises spoken in their marriage vows, for better and for worse suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but enjoying the perks, pomp and prestige. This is the gilt by association that comes with marriage to the most powerful man in the world.
Melania Trump is still a work in progress as first lady, a beautiful model who enjoyed the sophisticated social life of New York society and came to Washington untutored and unprepared for the rough-hewn politics that follow all presidents to the White House. It was not an easy journey from her "golden fortress" in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue to the demands of the mistress of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
On election night, when Donald Trump was declared winner, she had to have felt like Rachel Jackson, wife of Andrew Jackson, who, upon hearing that her husband had won the presidency, said she was pleased for him but "never wished it" for herself.
Rachel Jackson died before her husband was sworn in. Melania Trump could only delay her arrival to the White House for a few months, so as not to interrupt the school year of her son, Barron Trump, in New York. When she finally arrived, she was criticized for doing too little too late and then mercilessly mocked or publicly pitied as scandals of "other women" in her husband's past blossomed on the front pages.
More media attention has been paid to whether she allows the president to hold her hand than anything she has to say. This week, she not only held her husband's hand on the steps of the White House as they welcomed President Emmanuel Macron of France and his wife, Brigitte Macron, and then escorted them to their first state dinner; she was widely praised for her mastery of the details of the dinner, from the glittering gold plates and candelabras, to the pink cherry blossoms in tall black urns.
Nobody minded that she was gorgeous in a black Chantilly lace Chanel haute couture gown hand-painted with silver and embroidered with crystals and sequins, wearing it like the model she was trained to be. She might have been wounded by stray verbal shrapnel from ammunition aimed at her husband, but at dinner she stood above the gossipy fray, a hostess drawing on her own charm, skill and confidence.
"A man marries a woman, not a first lady," John F. Kennedy once said of his elegant wife, Jackie Kennedy. "She must fit her own personality into her own concept of a first lady's role." Or, to echo a famous exhortation directed at critics of a previous president many of us can remember, "It's time to let Melania be Melania."
uh huh.
Thanks for the great pics of this Melania goddess...!
Very beautifully said, grania...
I so remember that photo of our Melania with the Cruz daughters! I was very touched by it. The candid photo truly captured the essence of Melania, she was so loving with those little girls, so genuine, it just warmed my heart.
I am so happy that Melania is our First Lady.
It’s important to be mindful of Melania’s background. She knows about oppression and lack of liberty in ways we, as Americans will never experience. Our Melania grew up under communism.
Out of that comes her deep and abiding love for America. And, ultimately, America is going to love her back.
I certainly do.
Don’t make the Wookie mad!
You are addressing a dynamic that I had hoped would show up in Schwarzenegger. He went one direction and Melania went the other.
She’s a smart woman. He’s an utter fool.
How can you watch the jack boots in action, and then implement policies that are designed to create people just like them in time?
Guess Donald is getting ready to play ....... the piano.
Great family picture. Thank you for posting it.
Goodness!
“Let so and so be so and so” is one of the most tiresome phrases of all time.
The only problem is that even for the super rich in Manhattan, dwellings are not proportioned adequately for these paintings. You need a 12 foot ceiling, and there aren’t many of them in NYC homes.
Same comment applies to the furniture. Everything looks cramped and squeezed.
The ceiling in the pictured room is probably 12 feet-—the ceiling doesn’t show.
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It's been over forty years already, and we're not going to be getting anything else from her.
Doubtful, as the height of the furr down above the sofa is no more than about seven feet. The mirror over the sofa is jammed in; everything is hanging too low and too close together. The placement of the furr down is dictated by the location of the HVAC return grill, but could be considerably higher if the ceiling were as high as you suggest. Ceiling here is no more than ten feet, maybe nine. Even the super rich don’t have elbow room in postwar buildings in Manhattan.
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