Friday, December 6, 2019

Melania Strikes a Full Maternal Pose

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Melania Trump, who seems to recognize her own limitations as First Lady, usually manages to stay out of the public view, but last week she threw that caution aside and spoke out against what she saw as an invasion of her son's privacy by Congressional Democrats.

Pamela Karlan, a law professor from Stanford, was speaking to the first House impeachment hearing on Wednesday where she was discussing the differences between Presidents and Kings, and in attempting to illustrate some of those differences she pointed out that while Trump could name his son "Barron,' he had no powers to make him an actual "baron."  Only a king could do that.

It was meant as a humorous way of pointing out the differences between the powers of Presidents and Kings, but Republicans who are generally humorless - and always looking for an easy way to stir up their base - quickly began gnashing their teeth over the grievous insult of America's First Child.

Codifying some hastily drawn up Republican talking points into a  tweet of faux outrage, Melania - or one of her aides - had this to say:

"A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics.  Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it."
Several other Republican hacks quickly piled on, intellectual giants like Rep. Matt Gaetz who referred to the professor as "mean," and Mike Pence who said the impeachment hearings had reached a "new low."

Indignant Republicans generally failed to realize the irony of their outrage.  Many Republican officials have been openly contemptuous of Greta Thunberg, the sixteen-year-old climate activist from Sweden, and she has even been mocked by Donald Trump, himself.  A sixteen-year-old is a child,  no matter what Jeffrey Epstein and his sleazy buddies thought.

And then, of course, there is the extreme hypocrisy which comes with the GOP's long-standing abuse of minor children at our southern border - immigrant children who are being taken from their parents and then "lost" in America's foster care wasteland, or kept in cages and denied medical care, - even to the point of death.   Woe unto us all if Barron Trump ever had to endure anything like that.

But Melania and Republicans don't get outraged by massive examples of child abuse, like children living and suffering in cages.  In fact, when Melania left the White House last October for a visit to a captive child compound in McAllen, Texas, she was wearing a jacket with large white lettering across the back which read:  "I really don't care, do u?"

And yet she expects the whole world to rise up and be indignant with her because her son's name was used in a congressional hearing to make a point.

Melania, I agree that your son, or any politician's child, should be kept out of political discourse.  It's too bad that Barron was mentioned at the hearing, but the innocuous comment made about him will have no lasting impact.  Children taken from their parents and shuffled off into a cruel land of cages and foster care will suffer from that trauma for the rest of their lives.  If you are really an advocate for children, throw that damned jacket away and head back to McAllen and force the nation to pay attention the the very real crimes that are happening to children in places like that!

You have the soapbox.  Put it to a good use!

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