A commentary written for Facebook:
Today, the internet, concerned as it always is with the important things in life, is buzzing like a bunch of busybody biddies about some erotic photos Melania Trump made some years ago. The New York Post devoted its front page to one in which she's shot in the sultry embrace of Scandinavian model Emma Eriksson. The Post is owned by also-Fox-News-chief Rupert Murdoch, so this is the sort of low-dog "journalism" one has some to expect from such a source.
But it isn't trash-peddling rightists like Murdoch who are taking this "story" viral today. Instead, so-called "liberals" are plastering it everywhere, pointing at it and tittering like a troupe of 10-year-old twits at Republicans' would-be First Lady. Specifically, "liberals" supporting Hillary Clinton for president.
Yes, the Republican rightists hate queer folks and yes, they hate porn--in their recently-completed platform, they continued their despicable quadrennial ritual of bashing both--and yes, Donald Trump is a major scumbag running a protofascist campaign of hate and division and deserves to be hit with just as much shit as he's thrown. But this isn't hitting Trump and it isn't hitting those tight-assed rightists either. Does Melania, the one actually being slimed, deserve this? Do you "liberals" think there's something wrong with queerness or erotic representations of same or erotic representations in general? Are "liberals" suddenly getting behind things like slut-shaming? Do you want to make those quote-marks around the word "liberal" mandatory whenever intelligent people refer to you?
Here's something that shouldn't have to be explained to a "liberal." In these ridiculous political contests, spouses, unless they involve themselves too much and too obnoxiously, are civilians. Melania Trump is no politician. She seems to be a nice and inoffensive lady. It's probably hard enough for her to be married to Donald Trump in the first place and to be dragged into this freakshow of a campaign, something that puts her under a microscope but in which she probably had no real say. She's standing with her husband now, making the best of what must be a very unpleasant situation.
I would think the faction of "liberals" involved in making this "story" trend today would particularly understand this. During the 1992 Republican convention, speaker after speaker took to the stage to launch blistering salvos at the Democratic candidate's wife. It was a phenomenon modern American politics had never seen and became a sort of scandal. Press outlets questioned it, the public decried it, Democrats denounced it. It was clear a line had been inappropriately crossed. The Democratic candidate that year was, of course, Bill Clinton, and that convention was the launch of a quarter-century of calumnies aimed at his wife.
Those who objected to this back then were right. Some things shouldn't be dragged into the ridiculous food-fights that now pass for political discourse in the U.S. And no, the fact that conservatives and rightists have continued this disgraceful behavior by relentlessly smearing Michelle Obama throughout the current presidency doesn't create some loophole that excuses liberals if they take up the same practice. The hypocrisy of the rightists re: queer folks, sexy media, etc. is absolutely appalling but you can't hit a hypocrite by indulging in hypocrisy. If you do that, you're no better than he is. You're no "liberal" either.
Leave Melania alone.
--j.
