Melania’s most notable previous appearance had occurred when she said a few words at the Republican Convention, which were quickly discovered to be, in part, actually Michelle Obama’s words. The nudes, alone and à deux, of Melania Knauss (to use her name when the photos were taken, back in the nineties), appeared in the New York Post the weekend before last. It shows an unexpected maturity in American life, and then something predictably depressing about the hypocrisy within it, too.
Still, it is worth ruminating over for a moment, before it passes away, for two reasons. The story of Melania Trump’s old nude photos, and their odd blossoming into a fable of the trials of immigration, will probably remain as a footnote to this bizarre Presidential campaign, though footnotes to this campaign are rather like footnotes to “Finnegans Wake”: the text itself is so confounding that there isn’t a sentence that might not call for one. Photograph by Eric Thayer / The New York Times / Redux The story of Melania Trump’s nude photos shows an unexpected maturity in American life, and the predictably depressing hypocrisy within it, too.
