By our own example we must teach children
Er…
Melania Trump gave a speech at the UN “on the dangers of cyber-bullying.”
That’s nice, I guess, but she is after all married to the biggest cyber bully on the planet.
Now, she doesn’t make him do that, obviously, and she’s not exactly responsible for him, not quite so obviously…but she does live with him and stay married to him and appear by his side at intervals. She’s not exactly responsible for him but she is implicated in his bad behavior, because she stays. Is that unfair? No, I don’t think so, not really – not given the highly visible nature of his bullying, and how extreme it is. There’s something ethically wrong with someone who condones that level of brutality, and she does condone it by sticking around.
“We must teach each child the values of empathy and communication that are at the core of the kindness, mindfulness, integrity and leadership which can only be taught by example,” Mrs Trump said, raising more than a few eyebrows in the process, given her husband’s online behaviour.
“By our own example we must teach children to be good stewards of the world they will inherit.
“We must remember that they are watching and listening so we must never miss an opportunity to teach life’s many ethical lessons along the way.”
Like her own kid, who (I assume) is watching and listening to the way his father carries on. That’s some ethical lesson right there.
Donald Trump has been accused of using his own social media accounts to bully a vast array of people.
Accused? We’ve all seen them. We can see them right now.
How Melaina's UN Speech should have gone…
Melania- *breaks Donald Trump's phone*
Melania- I have just ended cyber bullying.
— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) September 20, 2017
This week at the UN: The First Accessory gets to talk about wimminthings like being kind to children, while The Man In Charge challenges everyone to a dick size contest.
#1 I don’t think raccoon penises count for Man in Charge contests.
Donnie amuses himself while Melania says be nice to the children.
She’s his business partner, no better (and arguably worse) than any of his enablers and collaborators. Her proximity makes her more, not less, complicit in his crimes; the fact that their business arrangement resulted in a child makes her more, not less, culpable for suborning and supporting his obvious, egregious, naked, unscrupulous, oafish abuses of decency.
Quite of a pair, they are.
Does she ever read what he tweets? Does she even listen to what he says? Does she even know what he’s enacted? Did she listen to what she said? How does someone take on this level of cognitive dissonance and still be capable of walking? Is she so shallow and unaware as to be that utterly ignorant of the complete disconnect between her noble thoughts and her husband’s behaviour? I could get it if she were being hiply ironic and/or she had declared her intention to divorce him at the end of the speech, but this I don’t get. Trump’s ethos (such as it is) might be boiled down to empathy is weakness; rules are for other people.
Whether she’s complicit in his behavior, her anti-bullying platform is thoroughly perverse.