S.Ravi Seshu
Indian media seems to be far better than the US newspapers when it comes to maintaining decency and decorum. No Indian newspaper brazenly hunts down the ‘rival’ politicians’ wives or family members to mar their electoral prospects.
Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post on Sunday published a front-page nude picture of Melania Trump, wife of the Republican candidate for the USA presidency. The 46-year-old Slovenian-born wife Mrs Trump naked with the headline “Menage a Trump.” On Sunday, the paper ran a front-page picture of a nude Mrs Trump, with stars covering her breasts, with the title “The Ogle Office”. These were 20 year old photos before she had met Mr.Donald Trump taken for a now defunct French magazine, called Max. These nude photos appeared in the January 1996 issue of Max.
The lead of the NYP’s nude story is as follows:
“Donald Trump thinks his wife will be a model first lady — and here’s the proof. Decades before she was sporting designer dresses on the stage of the Republican National Convention as Mrs. Trump, Melania Knauss posed nude in a photo spread for a now-defunct French men’s magazine, The Post has learned.”
Quoting Alé de Basseville, the French photographer who shot the sexy snaps, the newspaper claimed that ‘the images, some rarely seen and others never published, were obtained exclusively by The Post.’
When asked about the photos, unnerved Trump told The Post: “Melania was one of the most successful models and she did many photo shoots, including for covers and major magazines. This was a picture taken for a European magazine prior to me knowing Melania. In Europe, pictures like this are very fashionable and common.”
Melania was introduced to Trump in 1998 during a New York Fashion Week party at the Kit Kat club and the two got married in 2005 in a ceremony at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.
The Britain’s Telegraph ran a story saying that the pictures row may help Donald Trump win LGBTQ and single white male vote. “We’ve got 99 problems and a naked Melania Tump is not one,” rightly pointed out a voter.
Some analysts argue that the New York Post, which endorsed Donald Trump in April, published these photos of his wife with a political purpose.
“Why would a publication which endorsed him publish nude photos of his wife in order to sabotage him? They didn’t. They published nude photos of his wife to sabotage us.. The photos are nothing but a crude attempt to plant a red herring into our political news cycle,” a freelance writer fumed in The Huffington Post.
For sure, we don’t see such kind of cheap tricks in India during elections. What do you say?
