The Melania Monolith
It begins, as these things tend to, not with applause but with a memo. A proposal, floated through Congress like a swan-shaped ashtray — gaudy, unnecessary, and vaguely menacing in its silence.
Rename the Opera House, it said. The one inside the Kennedy Center. Rename it for Melania Trump.
Not for a tenor who died in obscurity. Not for a soprano who collapsed mid-aria in a red sequined gown. Not even for someone named Kennedy.
Melania.
There was a kind of inevitability to it. The suggestion wasn’t so much made as placed, like a piece of furniture no one had the energy to move. House Republicans submitted the proposal. The full Congress hasn’t voted. No one knows if it will pass. That isn’t the point.
The point is that the President is withholding federal funds — money the Kennedy Center needs, money meant to sustain the illusion of culture in a country that’s been running on fumes and nostalgia for decades. The funds will come, we’re told, when the Opera House carries her name.
Melania. The Slovenian cipher. The gold-leaf sphinx who floated through the White House like a perfume ad come to life — barely speaking, rarely blinking, but always watching. Like a Bond girl written by Ayn Rand.
This is not tribute. This is transaction. This is how history becomes interior decoration.
It’s not that they believe she deserves it. It’s that belief is no longer necessary.
Naming the Opera House after Melania is the aesthetic equivalent of hanging velvet drapes on a burning church. It does not rescue the structure. It only obscures the flames.
We tell ourselves the show is still happening onstage. That we are still the audience. But the curtains have been down for years.
The revolution will not be choreographed — but it might be purchasable with $TRUMP or at the very least tax-deductible.