There may be no better example of Wikipedia’s leftward tilt
than its entries on two of America’s First Ladies.
The entry on Michelle Obama is so glowing it might be likened
to the nomination of Mother Theresa for sainthood.
But the entry on Melanie Trump is more aptly compared to a story
from Confidential magazine -- a product of the 1950s that is considered the
prototype for scandal, gossip and expose’ journalism.
Michelle Obama never produced or accomplished anything of
note, but she wed a community organizer who went into politics, got rich and
rode the PC movement into the White House.
Despite her lack of accomplishment, Obama was not known for
her humility. "I have been at every powerful table you can think of...They
are not that smart," Obama once told Newsweek.
However, author Dinesh D’Souza has described Michelle
Obama’s college thesis at Princeton University as “illiterate and incoherent.”
The late author Christopher Hitchens said of Mrs. Obama’s
thesis:
“The only thing you can definitely tell from the attempt to read it,
because I maintain it cannot actually be read, it’s a degradation of the act of
reading, is that she favors, or views with favor, black separatism, or as she
calls it, separationism.”
“You should be able to be fluent, witty, self-deprecating,
insightful, amusing, personal,” Hitchens said. “Not a bit of it. It’s a trudge. It’s a
hateful, lugubrious, boring, resentment-filled screed written in some very bad
form of sociologies.”
But Michelle Obama, who is of African descent, got a degree then
parlayed that into lucrative, high-paying positions before meeting the very
ambitious Barack Obama.
The two entries are done with some subtlety but you can’t
miss the differences.
The article on Obama is more than twice as long as the one
on Melania Trump. It reads like a month by month account of her life, with a
wealth of trivia.
In passing, the article mentions the comment by Obama that
infuriated millions of Americans. She said she was “proud of her country for
the first time” when it elected her husband, but Wikipedia brushes it off by
saying it was “seen as a gaffe.”
At times it borders on the grotesque: “Obama has been
compared to Jacqueline
Kennedy,” it says, as if the Obama reign was Camelot 2.0.
The gushing, fawning Wikipedia article on Obama stands in
stark contrast to its treatment of the lovely, effeminate Melania.
Trump is not described as a beautiful, accomplished woman who
speaks five languages, but more as an opportunistic harlot, which is how she
often is described by Trump haters.
Like many supermodels, she posed nude on occasion. Wikipedia
dwells on this, essentially depicting the common practice as pornography.
It takes care to mention that her father belonged to the
League of Communists in Slovenia, where she was born. Also, that she dropped
out of college.
It quotes a snarky piece from the Trump-hating Washington
Post questioning her citizenship, which she obtained in 2006, a year after she
married Donald Trump.
It goes on to accuse her of plagiarism, but grudgingly notes
that she was a defamation suit against the tabloid Daily Mail, (offering a chance
to rehash the defamation). It also regurgitates the liberal media complaint
that she spends too much on travel, comparing it to the cost of Michelle Obama’s
travel. (But in doing so it compare’s Obama’s “solo travel,” apparently
ignoring her frequent lavish junkets with a huge entourage of friends and
family).
One curious passage: “During the 2020 State of the Union
Address, President Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, who was sitting right beside Melania in the gallery and she
presented the medal to him.”
What has all that to do with an article about Melania Trump?
One with a suspicious mind might think the only point of the paragraph was to
get the name “Rush Limbaugh” into the article, because it is a trigger for
liberals.
Wikipedia might be useful for detail on the migratory habits
of Canadian geese but when it ventures into politics it should be read, not with a grain,
but a hefty helping of salt.
