exFLOTUS (Melania)

[Slim Cognito]

I hate to seem petty, but does Melanie's eyes seem less squinty to you?

[RTH10260]

"I really don't care, do you?"

[Kendra]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/03/politics ... index.html

Nearly two months ago, CNN reached out to Melania Trump’s book publisher to request an interview with the former first lady ahead of her upcoming memoir. After several exchanges about a possible interview, the publisher sent an unusual demand last week: an interview would cost $250,000.

In an email to CNN, Skyhorse Publishing sent a document labeled, “Confidentiality and Nondisclosure Agreement” that laid out strict terms for an interview and use of material from the book, titled “Melania,” due to publish on October 8. On top of that, the agreement stipulated that “CNN shall pay a licensing fee of two hundred fifty thousand dollars ($250,000).”

CNN did not sign the agreement.

Days later, after a separate CNN journalist asked Skyhorse Publishing about the exorbitant interview fee, the publisher said it had sent the payment demand by mistake.

“Neither Melania nor anyone from her team knew anything about the NDA and the document that was sent reflected an internal miscommunication,” Tony Lyons, the president and publisher of Skyhorse, told CNN in a statement. “Had CNN signed an NDA, in the normal course of business, we would have approached Melania’s team to discuss [specifics of the interview],” Lyons said.

Moar at the link.

[chancery]

Whoops, we accidentally demanded a quarter million dollars for an interview.

[Chilidog]

Melania Trump passionately defends abortion rights in upcoming memoir

$10 says she's had at least one.

[Suranis]

Oh I'm sure she has donated to an abortion clinic or two.

[zekeb]

Oh I'm sure she has donated to an abortion clinic or two.

I'd wager that DonOLD has too.

[chancery]

Now that I think about, I'd imagine that she believes that she has strongly supported the rights of women to bodily autonomy by marrying a man who is wealthy enough and powerful enough to ensure that she personally (and likely also her son's sexual partners) are "free from any intervention or pressure from the government" if they chose to use contraceptives or have an abortion.

[Kendra]

Do we know the source of the book being #1 as tfg claims? I just clipped this from Amazon today.

[Uninformed]

Found this on Amazon.com:

Best Sellers Rank: #7 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#1 in US Presidents
#1 in Political Leader Biographies
#3 in Memoirs (Books)

[Kendra]

I can't recall the last time a book cover was kept so secret. I think Tuesday is the day. I can wait...

[neonzx]

Found this on Amazon.com:

Best Sellers Rank: #7 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#1 in US Presidents
#1 in Political Leader Biographies
#3 in Memoirs (Books)

Why TF is her book listed in categories #1 and #2?

[Frater I*I]

Why TF is her book listed in categories #1 and #2?

Because Reich Wing PACs are buying it in mass....

[Suranis]

Also, "Presidents" and "World Leader Biographies" typically sell 10s of copies.

And, the Publishers put it into those categories for whatever reason.

[p0rtia]

Publishers choose what categories (and key words) they want their books to be associated with when listing their books on Amazon or anywhere else. There is a list of main categories, and countless sub-categories. You pick a bunch. There are no tests, no exclusions; its just marketing.

US Presidents is appropriate and obvious for a First Lady's memoir.

[chancery]

The New York Times, October 5, 2024:

From Melania Trump: Modeling, Motherhood and a Brazen Whitewash of a Presidency
Slim and full of obfuscations, her memoir touches on business ventures and raising her son, but barely grapples with the mysteries of her marriage.

By Alexandra Jacobs

Gift Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/05/book ... =url-share

Jacobs skillfully grallochs Melania Trump's achievements, integrity, and overall moral fiber.

White House memoirs tend to go on a bit. Melania Trump’s is slim, as befits an erstwhile fashion model who prepared for her husband’s 2017 inauguration with “strong espresso and a light breakfast of fruit,” but gravely out of shape.

Better brew a double before cracking “Melania,” which, though clad in a black cover — a choice that could symbolize mourning, sophistication or more likely abject nothingness — is a brazen whitewash of a presidency and a marriage of some tumult.

Its 182 pages are padded with a generous photo insert, including an old ad she did for Camel cigarettes. There are long quotes from the former first lady’s previously delivered speeches, and some of Mr. Trump’s, too. And as if to assert herself against his omnipresent monogram, some paragraph breaks are marked with the stark initial M. Is this a book or a souvenir tea towel?

Certainly the timing of its release, less than a month before the 2024 election, invites speculation about what exactly “Melania” is intended to accomplish. Its biggest revelation, that Mrs. Trump supports abortion rights, could be a cry of independence — or a strategized attempt to further blur Mr. Trump’s unpopular policy position.

No co-writer is credited; after a plagiarism incident at the 2016 Republican National Convention, as Mrs. Trump explains in a chapter called “Why Was the Speech Not Vetted?,” she’s loath to delegate.

There’s another chomp of the madeleine when Donald, after meeting her one night during Fashion Week in the V.I.P. section of the now-defunct Kit Kat Klub, picks her up in a black Mercedes for their first date, a business-tinged visit to his property in Bedford. “Driving provides freedom,” she writes, “which I always treasure.”

<gag>

Her idealism was punctured after her prize money was stolen following a runway competition. “Such dishonesty has no place in my life,” she writes, “and it never will.”

And yet the only entity called to the carpet by “Melania” is the media — a faceless monolith solely motivated by a desire to do damage to her family, willfully misinterpreting and mocking messages — “Be Best,” her initiative to stop cyberbullying; “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” scrawled on a jacket — that should be obvious to all.

“Lying is not acceptable,” she asserts.

<barf>

[sugar magnolia]

I can't recall the last time a book cover was kept so secret. I think Tuesday is the day. I can wait...

Isn't it just solid black with her name on it?

[Kendra]

I can't recall the last time a book cover was kept so secret. I think Tuesday is the day. I can wait...

Isn't it just solid black with her name on it?

I believe it's out tomorrow, so we'll know soon enough.

[sad-cafe]

I saw part of an interview she did and she was adamant that she only wanted the one kid. In my mind I was like-yea she has her anchor baby...both to the US and to what $ she thought donOLD had.

[Frater I*I]

I saw part of an interview she did and she was adamant that she only wanted the one kid. In my mind I was like-yea she has her anchor baby...both to the US and to what $ she thought donOLD had.

A guarantee that she gets a piece, of what ever he has in assets, she's like him, she doesn't care about her child, just what she can use him for to get her cash so that after Zee Orange Furher shuffles loose the mortal coil, she can return to her country and live like an empresses for then rest of her days....

[AndyinPA]

I can't provide a link because it was on my Apple News on the phone, but the Vanity Fair review of the book is absolutely scathing.

[Frater I*I]

I can't provide a link because it was on my Apple News on the phone, but the Vanity Fair review of the book is absolutely scathing.

This one?

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/ ... oir-review

[chancery]

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/ ... oir-review

Some lowlights quoted below:

She dedicates much ink to recounting compliments that people have paid her. Following a QVC appearance, “Callers often complimented my style and jewelry: ‘It’s so nice to talk to you. I love your style; I love your jewelry.’” Elsewhere, she writes, “People frequently asked me about my regimen, marveling at the health of my skin.” She notes that she “was pleased to hear my name also being cheered, amid the clamor” after casting her vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. (There is so much cheering for the Trumps in this book—so much cheering and chanting and erupting in applause.)

Perhaps it’s also no surprise that Trump, granddaughter of a renowned Slovenian onion breeder and, by her own account, possessor of “a deep appreciation for the finer things in life,” is most comfortable dwelling in those shiny parts. Her origin story brims with childhood anecdotes designed to refute the “bleak and inaccurate picture of my upbringing” in her native Slovenia, from her father’s “exquisite vehicles”—Ford Mustangs, German BMWs, a Ford Cougar XR7, “prestigious Mercedes-Benzes,” a Citroén Maserati SM—to the “private nanny,” an alternative to kindergarten, who made elaborate cakes for her and her sister.

Of arriving in New York on a modeling contract, she writes that the limousine her new employers sent to the airport “exuded elegance. I felt an immediate sense of comfort and ease.” On the night she met Donald at a Kit Kat Club party, she arrived in a “sleek black limo.” She notes the two limousines that she and Trump and Michelle and Barack Obama rode on inauguration day and includes a photograph of herself in the Presidential limo, “The Beast.” Her excitement over the great city of New York is admittedly limited, extending “from the chic boutiques on Madison Avenue to the busy streets in the Financial District.” She lingers on descriptions of her wedding dress and her inauguration outfits. “In my couture gown, I danced with my husband to the timeless melody of Frank Sinatra’s iconic ‘My Way’ at the Liberty Ball and the Freedom Ball.”

At times, Trump has the narrative instincts of a hound in a fish store, following her nose from one exciting scent to the next, beginning anecdotes only to abandon them.

“It was not an easy process,” she writes of gaining US citizenship, declining to elucidate further. In a description of a trip to Japan she mentions that she doesn’t eat raw fish. Why not? I still don’t know. In a chapter detailing her experience of this July’s assassination attempt, she writes that “it had been a relatively quiet Saturday in Bedminster. Barron played sports outside. I was working on finishing my project.” Which project? Couldn’t say. Repetitions abound: “‘I think it’s very sexy for a woman to be pregnant,’ I told the readers of Vogue, making clear that I believe that a pregnant woman is very attractive.”

She has an anonymous tipster’s penchant for semi-blind items, particularly when writing about those who have wronged her—and in Melania, defeat and failure are always at the hands of a nefarious conspiracy or someone else’s incompetence. At a Slovenian modeling competition in the early 1990s, “I couldn’t ignore the buzz surrounding another contestant who seemed to have the right connections,” she writes. “My instincts were correct; the other model won first place.” (Her own success in modeling she attributes to “my professionalism and punctuality.”) The debacle around her 2016 RNC speech, which bore striking similarities to a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama, she blames on the campaign, describing her husband’s lack of awareness: “‘Why was the speech not vetted?’ I asked Donald in frustration. He expressed disappointment and was unable to provide me with an answer…Discovering the team’s failure to perform their duty filled me with a profound sense of betrayal.”

She rehashes dull and years-old disputes, including a cosmetics distributor who flubbed a contract to put out the defunct skincare line, “Melania Caviar Complexe C6.” (For all her vague gesturing to “all we hoped to accomplish in a second term,” her most concrete goal described in the book: “I hope to have the opportunity to bring excellent skincare products to market in the future under more favorable circumstances.”)

[AndyinPA]

I can't provide a link because it was on my Apple News on the phone, but the Vanity Fair review of the book is absolutely scathing.

This one?

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/ ... oir-review

Yep. Thanks.

I should have checked it out. I also should look at another subscription. I used to have one, and I liked having it.

[Rolodex]

Oh. That writing is...tragic.