I ache for Ivanka. But mostly, I marvel at her — and at the many, many people like her who have a special talent, a preternatural discipline, for pausing at every pivotal crossroads and making a coldblooded, single-minded assessment: How do I navigate this to maximum advantage for me?
Things got tricky: Daddy sent those ruffians to the Capitol, where they made a horrible mess and threatened to maul Mike Pence. Ivanka recalculated. For her appearance before the Jan. 6 committee, she wore a glimmer of disapproval.
And now, well, there’s no figuring out where to turn or whom to burn. Daddy was just hauled into a Manhattan courthouse because of that smuttiness with the porn star. Can Ivanka play the part of a distracted onlooker without seeming like a 24-karat ingrate?
Nothing good for her can come of this, so she’s saying and doing almost nothing at all. She’s in limbo. She’s in hiding. She has gone from gaga to Garbo and wants to be left alone, at least until the Stormy weather clears.
She did, according to a report in The New York Post, visit Daddy at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday. And last week, following his indictment, she put out that statement about it on Instagram. But it read as though it were written by a chatbot getting a pedicure. It comprised just 27 weightless, gutless, exquisitely noncommittal words — about loving Daddy, about loving America, about being “pained.” His indictment is a kidney stone to be passed.
And she’s the patron saint of all the unscrupulous opportunists who are taking little or big steps away from Daddy but contentedly ignored his depravity and destructiveness when there was power to be gained from that. When there was a profit to be made. (...)
For Daddy’s current presidential campaign, she sent her regrets. “This time around,” she said in a statement released the same night he announced his candidacy, “I am choosing to prioritize my young children.” Were they not priorities before?
She added that she didn’t “plan to be involved in politics.” The thing about plans is they can change. Ivanka’s vanishing act is a testament to that.
by Frank Bruni, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Ben Wiseman
[ed. Who doesn't appreciate a good burn now and then? Also in this column, a return to Love of Sentences:]
Anthony Lane had great fun reviewing the movie “Cocaine Bear,” which lends new definition to the phrase “high concept”: “Allegedly, it’s based on true events, in much the same way that ‘Pinocchio’ is based on string theory.” Also: “The animal kingdom is represented by a butterfly, a deer and a black bear. Only one of these is on cocaine, although with butterflies you can never really tell.” (...)
Also in The New Yorker, Nathan Heller described the effect of the internet and smartphones on college students’ attention spans: “Assigning ‘Middlemarch’ in that climate was like trying to land a 747 on a small rural airstrip.” (...)
In The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan weighed in on the chilliness of Ron DeSantis, who gives her the feeling “that he might unplug your life support to re-charge his cellphone.”
Anthony Lane had great fun reviewing the movie “Cocaine Bear,” which lends new definition to the phrase “high concept”: “Allegedly, it’s based on true events, in much the same way that ‘Pinocchio’ is based on string theory.” Also: “The animal kingdom is represented by a butterfly, a deer and a black bear. Only one of these is on cocaine, although with butterflies you can never really tell.” (...)
Also in The New Yorker, Nathan Heller described the effect of the internet and smartphones on college students’ attention spans: “Assigning ‘Middlemarch’ in that climate was like trying to land a 747 on a small rural airstrip.” (...)
In The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan weighed in on the chilliness of Ron DeSantis, who gives her the feeling “that he might unplug your life support to re-charge his cellphone.”
