Let Them Eat Goya

So much swirling yesterday, so I decided to spin the Trump Wheel o' Wonder to see where it would end up with.  And this is what I came up with.  A parody tweet about Ivanka Trump

Except here's the thing -- this is serious.  It's not a parody.

I swear with my hand on all the Bibles you can find that when I first saw it scroll by on my Twitter feed, I assumed it was a joke and that someone photoshopped the product into the dear daughter's hands.  So, I sort of smiled, shrugged and moved on.

But then a bit later, I saw it show up again -- and there was a response to it, and it seemed to suggest it wasn't a parody at all.  So, I checked closer...and sure enough, it's real and was actually from Ivanka Trump's own account. But still, okay, yes, that was odd, but figured it was years old, from before her dad was in the White House, because seriously, who would do just an utterly stupid thing, even by this administration's very low -- bordering on non-existent -- standards..  But I checked the date...and O dear God, it's it's from TODAY!

And by "TODAY!" I don't just mean this date on the calendar.  I mean, today, in the middle of a pandemic.  When at 139,143 Americans have died.  And 47 million Americans have applied for unemployment. 

And it's not just the daughter of the president in charge of all this is doing this -- but she's an actual White House adviser hawking a product. Which not only is utterly nuts and thoughtless, but is like really illegal.

At least when Billy Carter lent his name to Billy Beer he wasn't a White House employee.  Just a private citizen.

And at least when Marie Antoinette said, "Let them eat cake," she didn't take out an ad of her posing with a big Dobish Torte in her hands.

And it appeared on the same day that dear Ms. Trump sent out a video telling people that if they were unemployed and having a hard time, they should "learn a new skill."  Even more thoughtlessly, the ad was sent out under the title, "Find Something New."

On the same day she's hawking food products.

To be clear, the overall idea of the government campaign may be reasonable, but the execution -- especially with Ms. Trump's participation -- is unthinkingly incompetent.  Like so much of this administration.

And no, to be very clear, the reference to Marie Antoinette in relation to "execution" was not an intended connection.  But what an administration this is where I feel I have to clarify that point...

I have no idea what Ivanka Trump was thinking with any of this, but especially the Goya ad.  The best I can figure is that it was a ham-fisted way to desperate try to win the Hispanic vote, after her dad has driven them away by calling them rapists, bad hombres and thugs, and refuses to back the Dreamers Act, and has spent four years insisting he wants to build a War to keep out Mexicans from the United States.  So, no, the daughter of that same man dressed lovingly in all-flouncy white selling a product to Mexicans and adding, "Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno" just isn't going to cut it.

Or, perhaps it happened because the president of the Goya company said something nice about Trump last week and now people are boycotting it.  But that means they think the way to fix this is to have Trump's daughter promote the product (which is illegal to do...) to win back Hispanic support that disappeared because of hatred against her father.  Which would be doubling-down on insanity.  Further, why would a normal White House even care about propping up a specific product over its competitors, which would be even more illegal?  (And yes, I used "normal White House" intentionally...)

And maybe neither of that is the idiotic point, to win over the Hispanic with an illegal ad.  But if not, then I don't have a clue what on earth she was doing.  Unless it was just to pick up a big paycheck.   Which, when you think about it, is another Really Bad Look for a political campaign trying desperately to make a fake issue out of Joe Biden's child making money off his father's name in a business he knew nothing about.

Because, yeah, Ivanka Trump is a real expert on Mexican cuisine.  And she got the gig having nothing to do with her father.  And I'll be shocked if she didn't get A LOT MORE money than the $200,000 Hunter Biden was paid for serving on a corporate board -- which didn't break any laws.

So, it wasn't a joke.  It wasn't a photoshopped parody.  It was real.  Real.

For the sake of comparison, this, on the other hand, is a photoshopped parody joke.  

But the one hawking Goya?  That -- was -- real.

Though I'm not completely sure which of them is funnier.

​I note all this not because it's so utterly, mind-numbingly thoughtless -- and illegal -- of Ivanka Trump at any time during an administration, but most especially during a pandemic and widespread unemployment -- although it is -- but because it's just about as perfect an image of the Trump administration as one could find.

Que ellas se pudran en el infierno.  

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