What I REALLY want to know about the news-behind-the-news is, why is Melania suddenly holding press conferences to say that she didn't know nothin' about Jeffrey Epstein and *especially* wasn't having a relationship with him?
I mean, with the right it's ALWAYS projection, right? So if she runs true to form for a conservative this probably means she had an affair with Ghislaine Maxwell.
@cstross Or she had in fact nothing to do with the sexual abuse, but _was_ having the corpses rendered down for otherwise unobtainable sourced-from-human-tissue anti-aging cosmetics. And she wants people to know that of course she would never be so déclassé as to ask about where the young pretty corpses were coming from.
If it isn't something somehow specifically excruciatingly embarrassing to the surviving principals, it's something your editor would never let you keep in the text.
@passenger In a patriarchal context, feminine power consists of who you are able to refuse.
The idea of not being able to refuse Jeffery Epstein despite a decades-long marriage to Trump (and all the personal and emotional costs that implies) would rankle; it's putting her back in the context of disposable prettiness which can be rendered down for cosmetics and no one cares. All this suffering has to be worth something.
Especially if in fact she couldn't and now everyone will know.
Charlie Stross
Graydon
Passenger