As Melania Trump took to the stage at the Republican National Convention on August 25 - where she called for her husband, Donald Trump, to receive another four years in office - legendary entertainer Bette Midler sparked outrage across the political spectrum when she tweeted that the First Lady "still can't speak English", and branded her an "illegal alien".
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She added that the 50-year-old former model, born in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, was "One lucky Slovenian! And after all that surgery, you hit a kind of horrible jackpot, chained to [a] colossal idiot."
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Midler's remarks were, of course, xenophobic, and the backlash from both the left and right was swift.
"When Liberals are so bad that you have to defend Melania Trump. This is beyond gross @BetteMidler and I am no fan of the First Lady. You have become what you think you are “resisting", wrote one commentator.
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Another corroborated: "I cannot understand how such blatant hypocrisy doesn’t make their heads explode. People like Bette Midler and Kathy Griffin expend enormous energy calling Trump and his supporters racists and bigots, then mock the First Lady, who speaks 5 languages, because she has an accent? [sic]"
Midler has since responded to the criticism, and issued the following apology on Twitter:
"Well, all hell has broken loose because I said Melania ‘still can’t speak English’ last night. I was wrong to make fun of her accent.
"America is made up [of] people who speak with all kinds of accents, and they are all welcomed always."
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However, the furor that Midler's comments incited has, apparently, united both Democrats and Republicans in acknowledging the hypocrisy of liberals in espousing left-leaning values, yet using the tricks of the right to take aim at their opposition.
Midler, who at once denounced Donald Trump's decidedly "racist" policies and his administration's blatant xenophobia, put herself in the same camp when she proceeded to mock the First Lady for her accent, and thereby her status as an immigrant.
According to The Sun, Melania is not only fluent in her native Slovenian, but can also speak English, French, Italian, and German.
Midler essentially found herself relying on Trump's calling card: insulting the opposition, rather than the specifics of their opinion, ideology, or in this case, the contents of her speech.
Case in point: within hours of Joe Biden's announcement to run for the Democratic candidate, Trump branded the 76-year-old erstwhile Vice President as "Sleepy Joe", and someone whose "intelligence has been "long in doubt".
Several weeks later, he added "creepy" to the monicker.
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In fact, prior to issuing her apology, Midler even admitted that she was "just giving [the Trumps] a taste of their own immigrant bashing medicine."
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A 2019 Washington Post article titled 'The Expansive, Repetitive Universe of Trump's Twitter Insults', sought to see how often Trump repeated the same insults. In particular, Philip Bump found that he used 15 different terms to mock his 2016 presidential opponent, Hilary Clinton, some of which were: "failed", "dishonest", "nasty", "disgraced", "overrated", and "dummy".
Rather than questioning the specifics of Clinton's campaign, he made an elementary attack on her character.
Who can forget the social media landscape after Trump used the term "nasty woman" to refer to Clinton during the third presidential debate of the campaign? The term duly became memeified, as well as a viral rallying call for some female voters.
Of course, Melania's speech was riddled with hypocrisy. Using her trademark unemotional vacuity, she conceded to the "harsh reality" of "racial unrest in our country", when, back in July, her husband called the words Black Lives Matter a "symbol of hate".
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Moreover, as protests continue into their fourth night in the city of Kenosha - after a police officer shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back on August 23 - her remarks rendered themselves especially redundant.
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And when Melania stated that our "diverse and storied history is what makes our country strong", democratic pundits were compelled to reference the infamous 2011 interview that saw her question the birthplace of her husband's predecessor, Barack Obama.
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Still, when we are facing what may be the most important election campaign of our lifetimes, in the wholly unprecedented year that is 2020, it is important for the left to distinguish itself from the right as much as possible.
Striking below the belt at Melania Trump - no matter how problematic her beliefs may be - by insulting her accent and the fact that she was not born in the US, does nothing to aid the greater cause.
Here is how you can support Jacob Blake and demand justice...