Japan loves Ivanka

Trump not so much

Ivanka Trump told reporters she is ready to take over for her father should he decide to step down before his term is over. President Trump offered no response to his daughter's strange announcement other than to say she would make an excellent president.

This followed a number of odd comments by the President during his tour of Japan. Earlier he had pleaded with Prime Minister Abe, whom he called President Abe, to build Japanese cars in America. When told by PM Abe that Toyota produced over 2 million cars last year in North America, President Trump simply murmured, oh. President Trump also said he was astonished by the number of countries in the world when addressing a banquet the first evening. Who knew?

Mr. Trump also seemed visibly agitated by the prospect of feeding goldfish, or koi as they are called in Japan. He followed the Prime Minister in scattering a couple spoonfuls into the pond and then simply dumped the rest of the contents in the wood box, patting the Prime Minister on the back afterward as if to say, good job.

Ms. Kushner, nee Trump, seems equally confused by the customs of Japan, thinking Japanese anime was an appropriate precedent for skirt lengths when addressing a conference with the President, er Prime Minister of Japan. All though, I must say she looked stunning in her Japanese-inspired floral dress, created by Italian designer Johanna Ortiz. "Kudos, baby," said her father.

By contrast, the First Lady Melania Trump opted for a concentration camp blue dress, designed by Christian Dior no less, when visiting an elementary school with the Japanese First Lady. I don't know if she was paying tribute to the American POWs held in Japan during WWII, or simply thought it was the appropriate attire for young children.

The Trumps will continue their Asian tour in South Korea, but not before a friendly game of golf with the Prime Minister. Someone should brief the President that Hyundai also makes cars in America so as not to make another miscue in Seoul. As for Ivanka, she might want to add to her hemline as South Korea is even more conservative than Japan.

Comments

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

Search This Blog