The Triumph of the Whore?

Ugh, there's so much going on as January 2026 crawls and slithers its way to a close, and I'll address as much as I can in due time.  But in the meantime, the reviews are in . . ..  Critics across America are raving about Melania!

"Melania (★½ out of four) doesn't quite work as a documentary, as [the director] fails to offer a compelling glimpse into the first lady's life, instead presenting an extremely flattering view with little new information." - Brian Truitt, USA Today

"[Melania is so] orchestrated and airbrushed and stage-managed that it barely rises to the level of a shameless infomercial." - Variety

Melania is a level of insipid propaganda that almost resists review; it's so expected and utterly pointless." - Kevin Fallon, The Daily Review

"Some of this is undeniably watchable simply because of who and what she is, but the scenes of [French-American designer Hervé]  Pierre et al fussing as Mrs. Trump models soon grow tedious. More striking, though, is her fastidious attention to detail when it comes to how she appears. Her gaze never looks more intensely focused than when she’s posing before a mirror, checking all the angles with near-clinical detachment." - Manohla Dargis, the New York Times

"[Melania] is a purportedly serious film that plays like a mockumentary. If you were making a movie that parodied the current first lady of the United States, I’m not sure what you’d do differently." - Joy Press, Vanity Fair

And those are the most positive reviews.

But the premiere at the Trump-Kennedy Center was a runaway success.

The name of the director is Brett Ratner, whose only previous connection to the Presidency is that he was born on the same day that Dwight D. Eisenhower died.  He's directed the Rush Hour films, which finally made Jackie Chan a household name among people who do not follow martial arts, but he's also known even more for being blacklisted from Hollywood because of sexual assault charges against him.  Ratner is one of the earliest victims of the Me Too movement of the early days of Trump's first term.  No doubt Ratner got the job to film this thing because Trump sympathized with his plight, but the only way Melania was going to be a success was if Ratner treated it as a comedy, not a serious documentary.  If the reviews of the film - a look at the twenty days before Donald Trump's 2025 inauguration - are to be taken at face value (and why wouldn't they be?), it's a comedy, alright, but the comedy is unintentional.

Joy Press also added in her review that Ratner is no Leni Riefenstahl, and as that great American humorist Earvin "Magic" Johnson once said, man, that's cold.  Even though Leni Riefenstahl and her American counterpart, David Wark Griffith, are likely in purgatory for their racist attitudes and affiliations, they at least gained recognition for their technical proficiency in moviemaking.  D.W. Griffith, for example, may have made Birth of a Nation, but he also gained acclaim for freeing the cinema from merely being filmed plays, with his innovative camera angles and elaborate sets.  Brett Ratner doesn't even have that going for him.  In a word, he's a hack.  

And it's his name on the film.  Several people who were involved with it had their names removed from the credits, so Ratner clearly owns this one.  As does Melania.

Get back, Melania, your mommy's waiting for you.

The most obscene thing about Melania is all the money Jeff Bezos spent on this film, $75 million in production and promotion just to secure government contracts, meaning he'll make back that money in a jiffy - just not at the box office.  Even worse, this movie is being distributed by MGM, since bought by Bezos' Amazon. This is the same studio that lifted to stardom, among others, Judy Garland, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Elizabeth Taylor, Gary Cooper, Gene Kelly, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Myrna Loy, Mickey Rooney, Donald O'Connor, Robert Mitchum, and the King of Hollywood himself, Clark Gable.

Not to mention Shorty the kitten, the star of Bad Luck Blackie.

Rest in peace, Tex Avery. 

But unlike these stars, and the movies (and cartoon shorts) they starred in, Melania will be forgotten.

Likely by next Tuesday.

Right . . . back in a flash with more trash.

It's Only a Movie

At a time when ICE is murdering people in the streets of Minneapolis and threatening to take their road show elsewhere, Donald Trump is promoting the allegedly long-awaited documentary on his wife.

Melania Trump is particularly in a bad mood because of what is happening in Minneapolis, and not because two people have been brutally murdered.  She's upset because all of the brouhaha there is overshadowing to the premiere of her documentary this week.

I've seen other examples of heartless callousness before, but this takes the kremšnita.

Melania, it must be remembered, is as much a grifter as her husband is.  And like Donald, she only cares about herself and has only one purpose, to make as much money as she can before she dies.  The only reason this documentary exists is because Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, looking to mend fences with her husband, offered $40 million to produce such a film.  In exchange, Bezos expected from Trump - and got - relief from Trump's threats to raise postal rates that would affect Amazon's bottom line, and - more important to Bezos - a chance to get some really lucrative contracts (*cough cough*, Blue Origin, *cough cough*).  Bezos ended up spending 75 million simoleons on the movie, with the additional $35 million for marketing.

Now the movie is premiering nationwide tomorrow, and it's already a flop.  Tickets for advance sales have sold so poorly, the theaters can't even give them away.   People are posting on social media things they'd rather do than watch Melania, such as prepare for a colonoscopy, have their wisdom teeth taken out, or watch the 1978 Sgt. Pepper movie twice (and I've already done all three!).  Melania is likely to be the be the lowest-grossing movie of all time, grossing even less money than Zyzzyx Road, a 2006 thriller that only took in thirty dollars in a very limited theatrical release.  But then, it starred Katherine Heigl. 

Melania, by all accounts, is likely to win a Razzie award for playing herself.  As for Jeff Bezos, he got what he wanted, and the $75 million he spent to get influence Trump is just pocket change for a multibillionaire like him.   In the meantime, following a private screening at White House this past Sunday, Melania has its world premiere tonight at the Trump-Kennedy Center.  A slew of D-list celebrities are attending, and this premiere is likely to have all of the glamour of a home movie being shown in the family den, but who cares when all that mattered is to provide an outlet for lower-middle-class entertainment for the undereducated to appreciate?  That, of course, is nothing new for the Trump-Kennedy Center, which was a second-rate showbiz venue long before Trump added his name to it.

All that notwithstanding, Melania is sure to close in the theaters faster than a storm window in the current brutal cold snap that is currently gripping the Northeastern states (which still haven't seceded like I'd hoped).

Family Secret

After denying and downplaying COVID-19 and after insinuating that vaccines were okay, if you were in to that sort of thing, but not necessary ("Vaccine or not, America is back!" he said this past spring), Donald Trump, having had COVID, quietly got vaccinated without telling anyone .  His trophy wife Melania got vaccinated too.

They could have had their vaccines administered in public, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had done, to instill confidence in the vaccine.  But no, that would have helped President Biden, and so they chose to keep it secret.  Until the secret got out.  And many Trump supporters still think the vaccine is part of a plot to give Bill Gates control of their bodies with microchips, or something like that.  Many of them don't believe COVID is real - or at least it's no big deal, if Trump survived it.

I don't think I need to say any more about this.

First Lady and Last Men Standing

Melania Trump came out and said she was disturbed by the violence that occurred at the Capitol last week.  But she refused to blame any one actor for it.  Like her husband.

This is the equivalent of her husband saying there were fine people on both sides of the melee in Charlottesville in August 2017.  In fact, she sees herself as a victim in all this!

It's quite obvious that Melania isn't an innocent bystander who got roped into all of this simply by being married to Donald Trump and wanted nothing to do with his corruption.  She's just another grifter, and the only thing she wants nothing to do with is the stability and the integrity of this country.  She's as much a villain as her husband and her stepchildren.

Meanwhile, as reports circulate of planned armed demonstrations at all fifty state capitols and in Washington this coming Sunday, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf resigned.  A rat we need on the sinking ship is gone.

With Trump all but certain to be impeached, we have days ahead that are going to be more than just difficult.

Melania Christmas

The First Lady of the supposedly United States, Melania Trump, unveiled  the Christmas 2017 decorations at the White House in this first holiday season of the Age of the Donald.  Melania's decorations include 53 Christmas trees, 71 wreaths, more than 18,000 lights and more than 12,000 ornaments.

Now, you'd think that our foreign-born First Lady (our first foreign-born First Lady since John Quincy Adams' wife Louisa), coming as she does from Slovenia, would bring a little homey Old World charm to the White House Christmas displays.

Think again!

The decorations are as cold and sterile as Melania's marriage.  Looking through this doorway, you feel as if you're entering the inner sanctum of a space station.

Step back, and you feel like you're standing in the middle of the atrium of one of her husband's skyscrapers.

This room looks so cold and empty that the presence of a single person makes it look even deader than it already is.  No cheer, no warmth, none of that stuff associated with Christmas. The decor along the East Colonnade, though, does bring Halloween to mind.

As white and unsettling as the President himself.

And if you think this looks scary already, it looks downright creepy when more dimly lit!

Michelle Obama's holiday decor for the East Colonnade invited you to come in and have some Christmas cookies.  Here, you'd be afraid to walk down the hall for fear of being kidnapped by a witch and thrown in an oven!  Melania wants to have you for tea?  Yes, my pretty, and you'll taste quite scrumptious with tea!

The decorations don't look any better in a brighter light.  In fact, they look even more sterile.

I've seen mausoleums with more warmth than this. This decor doesn't conjure up the sound of  Christmas carols, it recalls "The Immigrant Song," Led Zeppelin's song about Vikings conquering and plundering the Nordic landscape.  Valhalla, I am coming! 

The decor in the picture below has an air of familiarity to it, though.  It reminds me of being in the mall.  Now if she plays Mannheim Steamroller in the background, Melania will have the Paramus atmosphere down pat!  

I will give her this much credit; she did make the Red Room look very festive.

But when you have a room that's already painted in a cheerful color and adorned with paintings of Dolley Madison and of Angelica Van Buren, Martin Van Buren's pretty daughter-in-law - two beloved White House hostesses themselves - it's hard to screw up this room.  Heck, you couldn't decorate the Red Room for Christmas badly unless you tried extremely hard.  But then, Melania doesn't have the desire to try extremely hard at being First Lady.  

Gotta love the Nativity scene, though.

Ooh, look - they remembered to include black people!

It's nice to see the Nativity scene reinstated after the Obamas took it out of the White House Christmas decorations.  Oops!  Correction - the Obamas always had a Nativity scene.  But they probably didn't have one that looked like the birth of Jesus took place in a palace.  This looks just a little too opulent for the birth of a carpenter's son.

Don't look for a Menorah - the Trumps aren't encumbered by cultural sensitivity.  But Melania did remember the mistletoe! 

Just make sure soon-to-be Senator Moore and the President himself aren't standing under this when the White House hosts a holiday party for Congress!  Senator Franken?  Oh, he won't be there.  No Menorah, remember?

I'm sure Melania did her darnedest to produce some Christmas cheer in a house that hasn't seen much joy for most of the year, but it seems phony and insincere, much like the arguments in favor of the tax reform bill.  She's so cold and cheerless, even the sight of ballerinas, who danced at the White House to celebrate its Christmas decorations, didn't warm her heart.  Take a look at the official White House video for yourself; the ballerinas are dressed in white, have frozen smiles on their faces, and have their hair in buns tighter than their rear ends, yet they look like they're having more of a good time than Melania, who stares at them like a motorized-mannequin impersonator awaiting her cue.  See, I told you it was like Christmas at the mall! 

Very sad. The one time where Trump's penchant for gold made sense, and the White House dropped the ornament on this one.

My second choice for President in 2020 is Disney CEO Robert Iger, and not because I want to see the White House look like Disneyland in Christmas 2021.  No, I hope Iger runs because his wife is Willow Bay, the former Estée Lauder model and the anti-Melania.  If you look at Willow Bay's old Lauder ads from the eighties, particularly the Christmas ads, you'll notice the tasteful settings and dignified objets d'art in the background that look grand without being cold.  I'd like to think that some of the interior design schemes in those ads must have rubbed off on her.

And because her husband is Jewish, the holidays at the Iger White House would definitely include a Menorah. 

But, at least we now know that the war on Christmas is over.  Christmas lost.