New effort to fix Melania Trump’s Rose Garden mess
Critics said Melania Trump made the Rose Garden look like a cemetery. This is hardly surprising, because Melania has what can only be described as a black thumb, a thumb with a skull and crossbones tattooed on it. Everything she designed, while shabbily and haphazardly filling the role of first lady, was bleak and colourless, conceived with an unmistakable stamp of arctic chill. For instance, Melania made Christmas look like a conspiracy between Ebenezer Scrooge and Jadis, the White Witch.
When Melania Trump bafflingly took it upon herself to redesign the White House’s Rose Garden last summer, the result left even many of her ardent supporters cold. It struck some as yet another of Melania’s notorious excursions into sadomasochism, like her peculiarly-named “Be Best” campaign to curtail the very internet bullying for which her husband was America’s most prominent poster boy, or her bizarrely-chosen “I don’t really care, do u?” jacket.
Now 50,000 people are signatory to a petition to put the Rose Garden the hell back the way it was. They want First Lady Jill Biden and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff to restore the Rose Garden to its previous glory — by the genteel and lovely handiwork of a First Lady with actual class, Jaqueline Kennedy.
The Rose Garden was created in 1913 by Ellen Wilson, wife of President Woodrow Wilson. But it was Jackie Kennedy who put it on the map with her more vibrant and colourful remodelling in 1962. The Rose Garden’s reputation became, in retrospect, associated with the Kennedy myth, a distinctive ornament of Camelot. Melania’s pale attempt to partake in that myth has failed as completely as her twice-impeached, twice-outvoted, single-term, raping and murdering husband. The message is clear: we don’t want her stinking Rose Garden, nor the moron she rode in on. We never, as it were, promised her a rose garden.
Besides, it is our manifest pleasure to see every artifact of the Trump presidency dismantled one brick at a time. It’s particularly pleasing to us because Donald Trump used the office of the presidency to take vengeance on everyone who ever bruised his brittle ego. He particularly targeted President Barack Obama for having not only the effrontery not to be born in Kenya, but for being able to prove it. Trump hated the 44th President from the very start because he was black and dared to run for President in the first place. So yes, we’re going to enjoy taking everything down that reminds us of him and his useless, elitist trophy wife.
Some cynics have said that the year 2021 phonetically translates just like “2020 won.” I think we can now safely disagree. I don’t think I’m being premature by declaring this year an unqualified victory, an annus mirabilis, and the dismantling of the handiwork of the Worst Lady and her disgraceful husband is yet another symbol of the restoration of a great and proud nation. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.