JEREMIAH DENTON IN DRAG:

As the journalist Evgenia Peretz has observed, Melania once seemed poised to be the ideal "advertisement for Trump's virility." That ad seems like a faded bit of Melania's long-lost trousseau. Now she promotes his status as physically repellent.

When at the Macrons' arrival she resisted, in vain, her husband's efforts to hold her hand, it became plain: In her agonizingly high heels, she will hit her mark like a steely, dead-eyed cadet, but when it comes to actually touching her husband's skin, even our spirit-broken trouper won't fall in line. Especially on the biggest of stages.

Or perhaps instead of his virility Melania now advertises Trump's kinship with the "incel rebellion" -- a drastic internet movement among "involuntarily celibate" men who, according to CNN, believe that women have unfairly denied them the sex to which they're entitled. (Alek Minassian, who was charged with murder in the Toronto car rampage that left 10 dead, considered himself an incel and seems to have been radicalized into exterminationist misogyny by incel propaganda.)

In any case, it takes a hard heart to scorn Melania these days. Once she was spotted laughing with Barack Obama at the funeral for former First Lady Barbara Bush, it became clear that she still has the capacity to smile. Yoked to Donald Trump, she just lacks a reason.

Tweet   @brothersjudd