Understanding the "Don't Care" Jacket

What was all the fuss about the “jacket” Melania Trump wore on a humanitarian mission last week? If you're like me, your immediate reaction to all the tweets and e-mails was, "Who cares?"--but you should care. This is why.

I didn't care. You can take the model off the runway but you can’t take the runway out of a real supermodel. With her trademark ability to look fabulous in colors that make normal human beings look either dirty or jaundiced or both, Melania will probably look as if she were struttin’ and stylin’ the latest color-you-can’t-wear in her coffin, long after her baby-boomer critics are gone. Left-wingers, spare your envy, I thought. Generation X are grown-ups now. Deal with it.

I saw the official photo of her leaving the plane in something cream-colored. Shirt, jacket, dress, who cared? We all know designers fight for the right to get the First Lady to wear their designs. If the cream-colored item was her “Don’t Care Jacket,” straight from the studio of whoever fancies himself or herself the next Christian Dior, I saw nothing newsworthy there.

But no, somebody said, the message “I don’t care” had actually been painted on the jacket. A “rain jacket” she’d worn while changing planes in the rain.

Say whaaat? Number one, they obviously hadn’t seen the same plain white top-piece I’d seen. Number two, although everybody knows the message of rain gear painted with “I don’t care” or “Let it snow” or “This is my ducky day” is that you don’t mind the weather in your warm dry gear, since when do Washingtonians wear rain gear other than the classic trench coat?

Little kids might get the “I’ll be your sunshine today” treatment, but not for long. I’ve seen (and bought for The Nephews) classic trench coats in children's size three. 

Nobody makes Washingtonians do this. Newcomers to the city bring other rain gear, but soon learn: There is no garment more appropriate to Washington’s climate than the classic London Fog. 

Some frown on the trench coat’s surplus-store look, but Melania, never averse to documenting that she looks healthy in olive or khaki, has been known to wear shirts and jackets inspired by actual soldiers’ uniforms.

So what kind of “rain jacket” had Melania chosen, and who had begged or bribed her to wear it? This I had to see, so I clicked over to the Daily Kos, which is a left-wing group blog similar to The Blaze, only shriller. (I subscribe to both blogs’ e-mail updates but seldom click through because both sites are cluttered and behave badly.)

Yes, there was the Queen of the Runways, modelling an olive-drab hooded rain jacket. (The hood was a nice effect, not unlike the button-on hoods sold with some of the better classic trench coats.) On the back someone did indeed appear to have painted “I don’t care and neither do U.” A prank by one of the fun-loving Trump children, perhaps? No, said Kos readers, it was a design currently for sale in an online store (link), from Zara.

ZARA???!!!

Zara that’s reportedly still refusing to pay laborers for work they did in 2016?

https://www.change.org/p/justiceforbravoworkers

(Just to be clear, these laborers in Turkey are petitioning for back wages they earned but weren't paid during a corporate takeover. Reportedly most are still working now, but have yet to collect what they earned then.)

So this is not the normal little-kid “I don’t care how hard it rains” motif.

This is not just the often reported, sometimes quite amusing, “foreigner plays with unfamiliar writing system as art motif.” 

Anyone who’s wearing anything from Zara is telling the world “I support companies that fail to pay workers.”

That’s  "The Rrrest of the Story" behind the Daily Kos report (no link to a messy page) that Zara has been cranking out designs with all kinds of messages calculated to raise a fuss in the English-speaking world, issuing bogus apologies for one garment after another emblazoned with bait for one hypersensitive demographic after another. I didn't see the specific garment that upset Holocaust survivors (now that's a group with a valid reason for being hypersensitive) but I did see a "Gluten Free" design that raised screams of "Don't you even caaare about celiacs?"

Don't you even caaare about companies that just abscond with the wages their workers have earned, online shoppers of America? And if you don't, why should those workers give a flyin' flip whether their "edgy new urban styles" offend you? My guess is that they're printing up the most obnoxious slogans they can think of, short of obvious robot-censor-triggers like "I Hate U." 

It's called sabotage. It's the next step after sewing into clothes little notes that read "I made this garment but I didn't get paid for it."

I care, Gentle Readers. So should you. And so should Melania Trump.

She probably didn't see the original story; the First Lady of the United States does not actually have a lot of time to hang out online, and some criticize her even having a Twitter account. Well, here's the story, being tweeted specifically to her--or her social media consultant, rather. It would be great publicity for Melania Trump to investigate the story behind her famous rain jacket.

In theory Americans can't do much to help laborers in Turkey collect money owed to them by a company in Spain. In practice, being as famous, as rich, and as pretty as Melania can fairly be considered a super-power; Melania Trump just might be able to resolve this situation.

________________

Amazon book link? Why not? For those whose minds didn't replay the distinctive sound of "The Rrrest of the Story," a selection of the fun facts Paul Harvey Aurandt used to narrate on radio under that title:

Is Turkey Special?

It's gratifying to note an uptick in anonymous interest in a post at this web site, a few years ago, about Turkey, the home of the hacker who ruined my e-mail by "upgrading" to Yahoo Neo THAT LOUSY SCUM. I wish this hacker everything the law can do to him and a few things it can't, including glaucoma, 'cos anybody who inflicts Yahoo Neo on a fellow human deserves to lose his eyesight in a way that hurts. Anyway, the question may have been asked: Is this web site especially interested in Turkey?

Not exactly. We don't have close friends or relatives there. Occasionally I post from Wise, Virginia, which is the "sister city" of Cesme in Turkey, and that's about the extent of my interest. I try, not always succeeding, to read the world news that I receive, and express moral support for disaster victims wherever they may be. Sometimes I find the time to do this online, sometimes not. Some foreign countries have labels of their own on this web site, and some are lumped together by continent--one reason why Turkey has a label of its own is that Europe and Asia are one continent, separated by culture rather than an ocean, and Turkey is sort of in between.

So why, back when this site was being built, when I was still transferring the earlier posts over from Weebly, did I post a long appeal for Red Crescent/Cross donations for Turkey, with lots of color pictures? Why haven't the many other charitable causes for which this web site has expressed moral support received that kind of attention?

It's a fair question, and deserves truthful answers. Here they are. Turkey happened to be the scene of the disaster covered in that day's news. I happened to want to test two things that day: (1) how well Morguefile pictures would show up on this site--it wouldn't be fair to use Morguefile pictures as a main attraction, but now and then they come in handy--and (2) whether adding color pictures to the post attracted more readers. The post convinced me that (1) Morguefile pictures work beautifully on this site, and (2) adding them attracts neither attention to my writing nor, so far as could be discerned, support for the charity.

So I've not bothered to construct such elaborate appeals on behalf of other charities, since then. I've done the keyword thing (which was less obtrusive, in among the pictures, in the appeal on behalf of Van, Turkey) on behalf of a couple of books and business ventures, and Zambia. Most of the time I just mention that a charity is out there, throw in a link, and post the piece. If I were to find that more elaborate appeals accomplished more on behalf of the cause, I'd do more of them.

Unfortunately (here comes that nag) most of you readers don't seem to be sending much e-money to much of anything--this web site, or other web sites. Maybe you just haven't got any. Maybe some of you really are living on US$200-500 per month, as I currently am. And maybe some of you just need to be nagged, or prodded with sticks, or something. This would be a vastly better web site, more balanced, more pictorial, more books, more animals, more humor, more human interest pieces, more authoritative law and political posts, and probably better writing, if it were better sponsored. If this web site's Paypal account isn't working, which so far as I can tell it isn't, you need to send e-money to mine, which is linked to my personal e-mail account, which you access via our collective e-mail account, salolianigodagewi@yahoo.com.

And this web site recommends sending some money to other charities, as well as our own Cornerstone Communications (which could have a physical store, at last, this summer). Some people say that when you give away ten percent of your income, the universe naturally rewards you with more income. Obviously that's not a scientific statement; if it's true, it depends on individual psychology, so nobody can say how well it'll work for anybody else. Try it for yourselves. Draw your own conclusions. You're not obligated to support any or all of the charities discussed at this web site, if you prefer to support other ones, but it is gratifying to me when you support "ours."

Hacker Finds Pris

Fair disclosure to everyone who communicates with me via my personal Yahoo account: It looks as if the same person(s) who hacked into Grandma Bonnie Peters' account last winter may have found their way into mine.

Since, so far as I know, we all know to use e-mail only to bring publicly available information to each other's attention, this is probably more of a nuisance than a disaster. However, youall may want to save any strange e-mails from me that you may have received, and share these e-mails with Yahoo to help them track down the hacker.

Here's what's happened so far: Earlier this morning, "at 6 p.m. EET," Yahoo sent an automatic e-mail reporting that someone hacked into my e-mail from Turkey. I also received a link sent to me and a batch of e-friends. I didn't click on the link, but it looks like a commercial link.

Gentle Readers, I think you know I wouldn't send you commercial links by e-mail. If paid to promote someone's business, I'd put the link in an advertorial post right here.

The hacker also tried connecting my account with services I don't use, including Facebook and Flickr, and also (ooohhh, this is so annoying) "updated" the account to icky, ugly, inefficient, and apparently more vulnerable Yahoo Neo. I've demanded Yahoo Classic back, but meanwhile Yahoo is telling everybody that they're receiving a high volume of this kind of complaints at this time.

It can happen to any of us, Gentle Readers. Please make sure that any information you e-mail is public information. No links to a bank account (unless you have a special Paypal account with no more than ten dollars in it). No real addresses for private homes. No real names. No family pictures. And if you want only the person to whom you're writing to be in on your business plans, send them by real mail only.