There once was an informal editorial motto that guided the selection of topics in Style, the Washington Post lifestyle section: “If a story is worth doing, it’s worth doing every year.” But in the age of Trump, that schedule has become rather compressed: The Post is now doing the same article about Melania every couple of months.
It was at the end of January the Style section let loose with “The AWOL first lady,” decrying Melania’s demure, if not diffident, approach to being the president’s spouse. “Melania Trump appears to be in no hurry to heed the call of duty,” was how reporter Krissah Thompson denounced the Donald’s bride. And now, come March 28, the creative team at the Post is back, this time with a big Style section cover story, “Melania Trump’s vanishing act.”
Which raises a philosophical question: If Mrs. Trump was absent two months ago, how can it be that she is now “vanishing”?
We should note that when the first of these two articles appeared, The Scrapbook tut-tutted that, pace the Post, Melania’s lack of interest in “the folderol of official Washington” was “sensible and then some.” The second of the two articles only confirms our judgment.
In this new article, the Post is solicitous of the many upstanding citizens who have been discomfited by Melania’s choice to hole up on the 58th floor of Trump Tower. The first four paragraphs are dedicated to the heart-rending plight of the paparazzi whom she has stumped: “When it comes to getting people, I don’t miss,” photographer Miles Diggs told the Post. “But Melania has just been so elusive.” Oh, the humanity!
It’s not just celebrity-bushwhackers whom Melania has buffaloed. She has flummoxed an “ever-clamorous chorus of gossipmongers, pundits, historians and even body-language experts.” For this, one would think she might be in line for an honorary Nobel. But no, the Post‘s Paul Schwartzman (aided by staff writer Justin Jouvenal—this being a story that warrants team coverage) is not in that generous a mood. Her absences are “unnerving,” Schwartzman writes. “The first lady is invisible”—this because, among the gewgaws and trinkets at the Trump Tower gift shop, there’s nary a Melania tchotchke to be found; and when the first lady is present, she is a sphinx of a sylph—well, that or just a vapid fashion “mannequin,” “oblivious to the chatter around her.”
It’s a measure of the desperation the Post must feel in its quest to harry Melania that they have been driven to pondering the plight of not just one, nor even two, but three of the grown men who make their living snapping pictures of the famous and the infamous. Not only does the article begin with how the first lady makes their lives difficult, it returns, toward the end, to talk about how their efforts have largely been thwarted. The frustration drives paparazzo Diggs to fantasize: He longs for a “photo of her coming out of Barneys with a bunch of shopping bags” and drools at the prospect of how the image would sell. He even has a perfect cliché of a headline in mind: “First Lady Shops Till She Drops.”
The Post seems to all but drool along with him.
