No One Gives a Shit About the Rose Garden Right Now, Melania

[catbyte]

This is another “Melania, What Are You Doing?” hit, a song that isn’t a radio single but that the true fans will know by heart.

Erin Gloria Ryan
Updated Jul. 28, 2020




Amid a global pandemic that has killed 150,000 Americans and is slowing like a train that just started to choo choo over a cliff, 100 days from an election that is the fifth consecutive most important election in our lifetimes, first lady Melania Trump will begin the important work of renovating the Rose Garden to more closely resemble its original 1960s design. Finally! This is what we elected her for.

Some will say that rose gardening to the tune of the apocalypse is yet another gesture that is at best oblivious and at worst passive-aggressively cruel. Others will say that it’s a canny move by a classy lady who embodies tenacity in her public life. They’re both wrong. Melania’s push to apply her Be Best magic to the Rose Garden is perfect. It’s the perfect empty, image-obsessed gesture from a person who is almost certainly not going to perform the actual physical labor of the task, meant to hark back to a bygone era that we now realize had a lot wrong with it.

Melania gets a lot of flak for her “work” as first lady. Some of it she didn’t earn; for example, it isn’t her fault that her husband is a terrible president and therefore everything she does will be tainted by the stench of his failure. The position of “first lady” is also quite an anachronism. Hillary Clinton’s desire to turn it into a sort of modern policy partnership earned her the eternal disdain of the sort of person who still laughs at Lorena Bobbitt jokes. Even Michelle Obama and Laura Bush, two women who were able to perform the symbolic role with a modicum of ease, still seemed uncomfortable at times. That’s to be expected. The modern brilliant woman who would marry a man brilliant enough to be a good president would have to stoop to meet Americans’ expectations of what makes a “good” first lady. The first lady role is to American modernity what a Disney princess costume is to the Mayo Clinic.

But some of Melania’s moves as first lady have been so tone-deaf that there’s no way to explain them away as relics of an outdated role. They take effort. They take targeted ineptitude. Everybody knows about Be Best, which is a public awareness program, I think? Reading about it feels like my brain is being pelted by melted marshmallows. Nobody knows what Be Best did (does?). Nobody knows who it helped (helps?). Melania presented her signature program with all the panache of a sixth grader who waited until the last minute to do her science fair project, and then her mom did the whole thing for her. The program was as joyless as it was aimless. Here, look, I used baking soda and vinegar to make a volcano, for some reason.

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/america-collapses-and-melania-trump-decides-to-revamp-the-white-house-rose-garden

[demtenjeep]

1. empty just like she is

nothing that pathetic family is from the heart


it is all for "show,or photo ops, or slight of hand reasons.


She will never not be a nude model no matter how many coats or flop dresses she wears.


flotits will hold distinction for being ever the first nude

[calguy]

2. She's really into the Whore-ticuture thing

[dixiechiken1]

4. *SNORT*

[rzemanfl]

3. Oh, I would shit in her rose garden if I could get past all the fences

bunker boi had erected.

[IcyPeas]

5. new 13 foot fence blocks view pretty much: picture:

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/construction-starts-on-taller-white-house-fence-temporary-panels-block-views/65-8c0bce32-74c6-4f0b-aea8-4ba7afec9775

[Miigwech]

6. I bet she renames it the, "Be Best Garden," (the only English she knows) but they

better check under the new shrubs for missing bodies, if you know what I mean!

[indyblue]

7. She wants to plant her favorite flower, Titan arum (corpse flower).

[Goonch]

8. ;-{)

[Nevilledog]

9. ...

[Skittles]

10. she is so fucking creepy and worthless

[Sherman A1]

11. Making it a perfect project for her