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| Is Ivanka the worst Trump? Her tweeted portrait of ‘perfect motherhood’ seals it for me | Is Ivanka the worst Trump? Her tweeted portrait of ‘perfect motherhood’ seals it for me |
| (7 months later) | |
| I’m generally a big believer in Hanlon’s Razor: the idea that you should never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. But I’d like to put forward a slightly different theorem to help explain these Trumpian times: Ivanka’s Razor. The principle that, when it comes to Ivanka Trump, you should never ascribe to stupidity or ignorance that which can be explained by malice. | I’m generally a big believer in Hanlon’s Razor: the idea that you should never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. But I’d like to put forward a slightly different theorem to help explain these Trumpian times: Ivanka’s Razor. The principle that, when it comes to Ivanka Trump, you should never ascribe to stupidity or ignorance that which can be explained by malice. |
| Take, as a case in point, the photo Ivanka tweeted on Sunday, captioned “My <3! #SundayMorning” in which the first daughter is cuddling her two-year-old son. Ivanka chose to post this snapshot of familial bliss at the same time as the news was full of reports of children being separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border; a component of a “zero tolerance” immigration policy the Trump administration is responsible for creating. While Ivanka’s photo received immediate backlash, I was struck by the fact that the tweet was largely characterised as being “tone-deaf”. The general consensus seemed to be that Ivanka hadn’t considered how the photo might look amid horrific headlines about separated families. That she had been thoughtless. | Take, as a case in point, the photo Ivanka tweeted on Sunday, captioned “My <3! #SundayMorning” in which the first daughter is cuddling her two-year-old son. Ivanka chose to post this snapshot of familial bliss at the same time as the news was full of reports of children being separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border; a component of a “zero tolerance” immigration policy the Trump administration is responsible for creating. While Ivanka’s photo received immediate backlash, I was struck by the fact that the tweet was largely characterised as being “tone-deaf”. The general consensus seemed to be that Ivanka hadn’t considered how the photo might look amid horrific headlines about separated families. That she had been thoughtless. |
| Ivanka Trump photo with son sparks backlash over border separations | |
| Ivanka may be a lot of things, but thoughtless is not one of them. Ivanka is no ingenue, who has reluctantly been thrust into public life and is now struggling to keep her personal life separate from the political. She grew up surrounded by paparazzi; she is nothing if not media-savvy. What’s more, despite memorably saying she tries “to stay out of politics”, she has enthusiastically thrown herself into her unelected role in the White House and is an integral part of the administration. Indeed, both she and her husband Jared Kushner received full security clearance earlier this month. She is not passively complicit in the Trump administration’s policies; she is an active architect. | Ivanka may be a lot of things, but thoughtless is not one of them. Ivanka is no ingenue, who has reluctantly been thrust into public life and is now struggling to keep her personal life separate from the political. She grew up surrounded by paparazzi; she is nothing if not media-savvy. What’s more, despite memorably saying she tries “to stay out of politics”, she has enthusiastically thrown herself into her unelected role in the White House and is an integral part of the administration. Indeed, both she and her husband Jared Kushner received full security clearance earlier this month. She is not passively complicit in the Trump administration’s policies; she is an active architect. |
| So, when Ivanka tweeted that photo on Sunday, I don’t think it was a gaffe – I think she knew exactly what she was doing. Which was playing to Trump’s specific base; reminding them that it’s white families like hers – like theirs – who are important, not the brown families who Trump is breaking up; using the image of herself as a loving mother to provide a human face to Trump’s inhumane administration. Ivanka is an important complement to Trump’s messaging. He does all the crass dehumanisation of immigrants, lumping them together with the gang MS-13 and calling them dangerous “animals” the US needs to protect itself from; she provides the aspirational imagery of the US that needs protecting. | So, when Ivanka tweeted that photo on Sunday, I don’t think it was a gaffe – I think she knew exactly what she was doing. Which was playing to Trump’s specific base; reminding them that it’s white families like hers – like theirs – who are important, not the brown families who Trump is breaking up; using the image of herself as a loving mother to provide a human face to Trump’s inhumane administration. Ivanka is an important complement to Trump’s messaging. He does all the crass dehumanisation of immigrants, lumping them together with the gang MS-13 and calling them dangerous “animals” the US needs to protect itself from; she provides the aspirational imagery of the US that needs protecting. |
| The events of this past weekend have served to bolster my long-standing belief that Ivanka is the most odious of all the Trumps. While the entire family is morally bankrupt, at least the rest of the clan don’t pretend they are anything other than greedy narcissists. Her slimy brothers certainly make no attempt to appeal to liberals. Ivanka, however, seems intent on keeping up the charade that she is some sort of champion of women and families. It is becoming increasingly obvious, however, that the only family Ivanka cares about is her own and the only woman she has any interest in empowering is herself. | The events of this past weekend have served to bolster my long-standing belief that Ivanka is the most odious of all the Trumps. While the entire family is morally bankrupt, at least the rest of the clan don’t pretend they are anything other than greedy narcissists. Her slimy brothers certainly make no attempt to appeal to liberals. Ivanka, however, seems intent on keeping up the charade that she is some sort of champion of women and families. It is becoming increasingly obvious, however, that the only family Ivanka cares about is her own and the only woman she has any interest in empowering is herself. |
| Indeed, hot on the heels of the controversy around her photo, it was reported that the Ivanka Trump brand received approval for a number of trademark applications from China which, experts and watchdogs say, raise significant concerns about corruption. It seems that Ivanka Trump’s business, from which she has not properly divested, received these approvals just days before Trump announced he was reversing a US ban on ZTE, a Chinese telecom firm. It is possible, of course, that this timing was just coincidence and not a shady deal. However, that brings me to the second part of Ivanka’s Razor: when it comes to the Trumps, never attribute to coincidence that which can be explained by corruption. | Indeed, hot on the heels of the controversy around her photo, it was reported that the Ivanka Trump brand received approval for a number of trademark applications from China which, experts and watchdogs say, raise significant concerns about corruption. It seems that Ivanka Trump’s business, from which she has not properly divested, received these approvals just days before Trump announced he was reversing a US ban on ZTE, a Chinese telecom firm. It is possible, of course, that this timing was just coincidence and not a shady deal. However, that brings me to the second part of Ivanka’s Razor: when it comes to the Trumps, never attribute to coincidence that which can be explained by corruption. |
| Austerity in Britain: the view from the US | Austerity in Britain: the view from the US |
| It is hard to hear uncomfortable truths about the UK from Trump’s US, of all places, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important that we do. Indeed, sometimes the most clear-sighted critiques come from outsiders’ eyes, as a recent article about austerity in Britain, published by the New York Times, demonstrates. | It is hard to hear uncomfortable truths about the UK from Trump’s US, of all places, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important that we do. Indeed, sometimes the most clear-sighted critiques come from outsiders’ eyes, as a recent article about austerity in Britain, published by the New York Times, demonstrates. |
| “After eight years of budget cutting, Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and more like the United States,” the piece declares, “with a shrinking welfare state and spreading poverty.” It then fleshes out this thesis with a dismal tour of Prescot, painting a dystopian picture of a poor Merseyside town in a crippled country, whose outlook has only been rendered bleaker by Brexit. | “After eight years of budget cutting, Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and more like the United States,” the piece declares, “with a shrinking welfare state and spreading poverty.” It then fleshes out this thesis with a dismal tour of Prescot, painting a dystopian picture of a poor Merseyside town in a crippled country, whose outlook has only been rendered bleaker by Brexit. |
| Funnily enough, the New York Times’s perspective wasn’t much appreciated by the Brexit-loving Spectator – whose editor once suggested that austerity benefits poor people. Within a matter of hours of the piece going live, the Spectator published an indignant fact check and riposte. “It’s safe to say the New York Times doesn’t take a particularly fond view of Britain these days,” the Spectator sneered. It then went on to try and discredit the article by quibbling with the least important aspects of it. One of their “gotchas!”, for example, was the fact that the US paper had said that Prescot’s old library building had been turned into a luxury home, but hadn’t mentioned that the town does still have a library. What the Spectator did not choose to fact check, however, was the litany of damning statistics included in the article. Take, for example, the fact that national support for libraries has fallen by “nearly a third” and the number of elderly people getting government care has fallen by “roughly a quarter”. Presumably the Spectator chose not to examine these statistics too thoroughly because they know them to be true. | Funnily enough, the New York Times’s perspective wasn’t much appreciated by the Brexit-loving Spectator – whose editor once suggested that austerity benefits poor people. Within a matter of hours of the piece going live, the Spectator published an indignant fact check and riposte. “It’s safe to say the New York Times doesn’t take a particularly fond view of Britain these days,” the Spectator sneered. It then went on to try and discredit the article by quibbling with the least important aspects of it. One of their “gotchas!”, for example, was the fact that the US paper had said that Prescot’s old library building had been turned into a luxury home, but hadn’t mentioned that the town does still have a library. What the Spectator did not choose to fact check, however, was the litany of damning statistics included in the article. Take, for example, the fact that national support for libraries has fallen by “nearly a third” and the number of elderly people getting government care has fallen by “roughly a quarter”. Presumably the Spectator chose not to examine these statistics too thoroughly because they know them to be true. |
| A head of her time | A head of her time |
| Time for some feelgood news, don’t you think? So please meet 71-year-old Anne Bruinooge who recently completed her quest to do a headstand in all 50 US states. Bruinooge has been travelling around the US for the last decade, doing headstands in every state she visits; last week she ticked off her final state with a headstand in Alaska. Endearingly, these geographical gymnastics weren’t an attempt to get her name in the record books or go viral. Rather, Bruinooge says the motivation for her challenge was simply that she thinks headstands are fun. Let’s just hope her new-found fame doesn’t go to her head. | Time for some feelgood news, don’t you think? So please meet 71-year-old Anne Bruinooge who recently completed her quest to do a headstand in all 50 US states. Bruinooge has been travelling around the US for the last decade, doing headstands in every state she visits; last week she ticked off her final state with a headstand in Alaska. Endearingly, these geographical gymnastics weren’t an attempt to get her name in the record books or go viral. Rather, Bruinooge says the motivation for her challenge was simply that she thinks headstands are fun. Let’s just hope her new-found fame doesn’t go to her head. |
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