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I feel so sorry for all the keyboard warriors and Mike Johnsons out there who have stumbled across some Earth-2 where people can’t say “Merry Christmas” anymore. I can: Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! It’s ok to say both. Happy Holidays includes National Eggnog Day on December 24th, Kwanzaa beginning on the 26th, and Chanukah (Hanukah, Hanukkah) which began on December 14th this year. December is Universal Human Rights Month, though someone forgot to tell the Trump Administration. It is also Root Vegetables and Exotic Fruits Month: You can’t beet that with a jackfruit.
I am not the most insightful of gift shoppers. I used to gift-stalk friends on Pinterest, though that only worked for people in the on-Pinterest demographic. My wife, Kelli, is not on Pinterest. I have already bought her every not-nutso gift related to cats or tequila, so I was at a loss this year. But then I thought about how Kelli is my First Lady, and how it is a truth universally acknowledged that a First Lady in possession of underwear (and I do know that she wears underwear) must be in want of an underwear steamer. If Donald Trump hadn’t mentioned Melania’s steamed unmentionables at a North Carolina rally, this gift idea would never have occurred to me. Why it occurred to Trump during a speech about the economy remains one of the mysteries of the season and of dementia.
The problem now is that it is Christmas Eve and I still haven’t figured out if I should buy an underwear steamer or hire an underwear steaming service. An internet search for steamed underwear brought up results about disposable underwear for steam rooms and saunas, novelty underwear that expands in water, and one video about not using hotel coffeemakers because people wash their underwear in them.
At this point, I guess I will get Kelli a wide-brimmed boater hat, a “be best” t-shirt, and an “I really don’t care, do U?” coat.
So, again, Merry Christmas and Happy All of the Holidays. I hope that this and all of your seasons are joyous. If you want to end the year right, do not read the definition of any Urban Dictionary entry containing the word “steamer.”
It being the holidays and today being the day when some of us begin our holiday shopping, I thought I would keep this short. There has been so much going on: murder at sea, Donald Trump’s name plastered on the Kennedy Center and simultaneously blotted from the Epstein files, more sweetheart deals at the Department of Homeland Security, Kash Patel’s $300,000 armored BMWs, Trump’s typical and true-to-character reaction to the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner, and, of course, his digressions about the First Lady’s steamed undergarments.
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(My wife said that I must delete my joke about Melania’s undergarments getting steamed every time she greets Emmanuel Macron. Sorry about that. I think you would have liked it.)
With all of that going on, Christopher Anderson’s photos of Karoline Leavitt, JD Vance, Marco Rubio and others recently published in Vanity Fair may seem like a tiny blip on the news RADAR, but I think they say a lot about the times we are living in and about the Trump Administration.
It’s hard to feel bad for Karoline Leavitt when a photographer doesn’t alter his close-up photos of her to make them more flattering. There is already too much flattery and fakery in the White House. There is already too much façade and not enough fact, and the photo of Leavitt with injection marks on her lips is a great metaphor for the state of our politics.
I should probably be more empathetic considering that the only thing I need for a good jump scare these days is unexpected selfie mode when I open my camera app. Even worse is when the round mirror on the bathroom vanity is flipped to the magnifying side from which no angle is flattering and my face is never completely clean-shaven. Still, as the habitually dishonest mouthpiece for a man who regularly insults people based on their appearance, Karoline Leavitt cannot inspire more in me than an “I really don’t care, do you?” At least no one is calling her “piggy.”
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So, take a look at that photo of Karoline Leavitt. Look at the photograph of Kristi Noem using prisoners as props in El Salvador. Now we know that those were not even recent deportees from the United States behind her in the photograph. Add a picture of Pete Hegseth’s fresh from his Pentagon make-up studio and a photo of Trump’s name being added to the Kennedy Center. Throw in a picture of the East Wing of the White House being demolished.
Fifteen or twenty years from now, some student in a class on U.S. history or rhetoric or argument or media will use some or all of those photographs to write about this time. He or she will write about the shiny façade on a rotting structure, the plastic faces of incompetence and cruelty, and the supremacy of appearance over substance. I believe that student will write from a better time, but only if we who believe in democracy press on in our defense of the Republic.
I believe that a day will come when Americans look back at these images and wonder at the unravelling of norms and the cesspool of corruption brought on by a drain-the-swamp demagogue.
They’ll be grateful for those of us who said, “I really do care, don’t you?”
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