Weaponized graciousness

Emily Nussbaum two years ago on Princess Ivanka:

Ivanka’s made the choice to use her gifts to prop up her father’s ugly and xenophobic campaign, employing her charm as a kind of weaponized graciousness. She’s his consort, because Melania can’t be. And could Donald be bad, if Ivanka is good? Where Donald is rude, Ivanka is polite. Where Donald makes piggish insults, Ivanka shrugs: “Oh, Dad!” In last night’s seductive speech, with her corporate-P.R.-wiz delivery, she offered the same anodyne generalizations that her siblings and stepmother made in their speeches. Her dad inspired them; he taught good values; he can be trusted. It was like a Mad Libs compiled from Successories motivational posters…

If he inspired them, he inspired them to be greedy and crooked; he did not teach good values; he cannot be trusted. She lies just as he does.

Before Ivanka’s performance, her brother, Donald, Jr., predicted that his sister would succeed, because she “does the princess thing very well.” Her royalty is what makes her father’s royalty feel real. You’re not supposed to criticize someone’s daughter—and, if the press does, Trump will surely be able to score points by defending her. But this is the ugly truth: Ivanka has made a conscious choice to deodorize the stink of her father’s misogyny, to suggest that because he loves her that means he loves women—to erase the actual policies he supports. She could have stood by his side and smiled in mere family solidarity. She could have used her newborn or her work as an excuse to stay away from active campaigning. Instead, she’s stepped forward to blind female voters to who her father is and what he stands for.

And she’s still doing it.

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