Former president Donald Trump called Melania ‘Mercedes’ as he praised his wife during a speech in Washington DC. The crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gave the former First Lady a standing ovation as Mr Trump described how “people love her”. “Oh look at that Mercedes, that’s pretty good” he said as the audience stood and applauded. The GOP presidential hopeful was making the keynote speech on 24 February on the same day as voters head to the polls in the South Carolina primary.
Look at that Mercedes wouldn’t be a wrong name, it would be objectification to the point of calling your wife a trophy car, not even a trophy wife… Or maybe I read it differently
Mercedes is an actual woman’s name:
“The source of the name was Spanish businesswoman Mercedes Jellinek, whose father Emil Jellinek was a business associate of the company’s founder, Gottlieb Daimler.”
No offense, but a thread of people not having read “Count of Monte-Cristo” is just scary to see.
You don’t need need to read the novel. Plenty of movie and other media adaptations out there.
Only scarier. Also it’s easy to read, no?
I haven’t ready it yet, so I wouldn’t know. I didn’t grow up studying English literature. I’ve read plenty of Spanish ones, though.
What do you mean by easy to read? As in, easy to understand? 1,200 pages sound daunting for most people.
I meant the flow, Dumas is in general known for that.
Also French, not English, but he may be less known in Spanish-speaking countries, I didn’t know that. Thought Dumas was somewhat of a classic everyone reads in their childhood, a bit like Jules Verne.
Not everyone has had the privilege of being raised by the landed gentry. Good day sir.
Ok I’ll stop being an obnoxious dick now. First of all I just want to agree that I enjoyed the prose/flow of the Count of Monte Cristo. It was enjoyable to read but as a story I felt that it had some major issues and seemed to go on and on. Which I guess makes sense given it was serialized.
I think you’re vastly overestimating how much the average person reads, and what sorts of books they read. In my experience, very few people have experience reading anything more challenging/obscure than something like 1984 or To Kill a Mockingbird, which we were forced to read in high school and hated.
I think a good amount of people (myself for example) eventually fall back in love with reading and realize those books are really good, but in my experience the majority of reading most people do is non-fiction. I’ve read The Count of Monte Cristo because I quite like fiction and because I became aware of the story in high school through the movie, but reading a 1200 page revenge novel written almost 200 years ago is so far outside the interest of basically anyone I know.
I’m sure more literary sorts of people have had different experiences but I think my experience is a decent indicator. I grew up with privilege and have nerdy interests, so interacting with people who had the time/interest/access to literature was not unusual.
Even as a big fantasy/sci-fi reader Jules Verne hardly seems to be a “must read” these days. Certainly a name that is known and mentioned but not at the top of people’s recommendations. But I generally hate all the fantasy/sci-fi I see recommended so maybe it’s time to read some Verne.
Not me either, just asocial, ha-ha.
School program and literature similar to it are what I’ve read the least. My approach was to look through it 30 minutes at home and 5 minutes before the lesson, listen what others say, and try to improvise when asked questions.
Yes, recommendations and “must read” are not what I’m thinking. Rather nature, power of human mind and human courage, scientific progress of course. These books are very captivating for boys. Seeing them mentioned in some matching context may be sufficient.
Yes, it scares me to think that most good things I’ve read, especially in my childhood, I haven’t found and chosen consciously. Some were given to me by my mother, some by my father, some accidentally stumbled upon on the Web or elsewhere, some I’ve read, yes, after seeing movies.
True, sorry, I just learned that the author was French. I guess it wasn’t part of my curriculum. Maybe it would have been if I followed a more humanities focused path.
You would think French, being also a romance language, meant that Dumas was more popular in Spanish speaking schools. Or maybe my school just sucked :)
Maybe that and maybe this is similar to the reason I’ve passed on most of Russian classics, speaking Russian.
What a shit take lol. It’s not even that good of a book, way too fucking long.
That’s irrelevant. Trump said “Look at that Mercedes”. That’s the sentence structure for an object. Not a person, no matter what their name is.
Oooh, serves me right for not reading TFA. Yeah, with context, it’s clear he’s objectifying her.Edit: I saw the video. It’s debatable that we said “look at that Mercedes!” There was a “wow” and a pause in between. Did he mean to say “look at that Mercedes?” Possibly. But it’s also possible that he meant “Look at that, wow! Mercedes, that’s pretty good!”
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Mercedes isn’t that rare a name in certain cultures…
Mercedes is the main character in The Merchant of Venice, it’s been a woman’ name for a long time. Could be his pet name for her?
Mercedes is a name, yes. The sentence structure fits more to speaking about an object though. Replace the name Mercedes with Ferrari and you see how it still works? I’m not saying his sentence structure is always correct but referring to his wife as a high end luxury object is something he would think is flattering (and many women would infact blush at being called so). Many others would feel objectified and think the speaker was a creep, hence the way I read it.
Did you just read the quote of what he said or did you actually listen to it? By the way he says it, it’s clear he’s using it as a name.
I would say the article even printed the quote wrong. They wrote, “Oh look at that Mercedes, that’s pretty good.”
They dropped a word and in my opinion got the punctuation wrong. I would quote it as, “Oh look at that, wow. Mercedes, that’s pretty good.”
“Oh look at that, wow. Mercedes, that’s pretty good. Wow, she’s good.”
Yeah it’s very clear he’s referring to her, not a car.
Since when is Mercedes a high end luxury object? Its one car maker from Germany. Do they make some higher end models? Sure but hardly Ferrari, Lamborghini or Bugatti.
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