Everything about Trump’s tacky, self-indulgent atrocity billed as a Birthday Celebration was vulgar.

The travesty was worse than we imagined. A violent, Vegas-style carousel of greased-up men duking it out Gladiator style on the White House lawn, desecrating sacred ground as the rich and powerful cheered on. An abomination that ended with a vile and racist comment.

All while the average American cannot afford healthcare, gas, and the cost of living.

Imagine a U.S. president using his birthday for the good of the people.

We don’t have to imagine.

Once upon a time, we had a leader whose birthday celebrations were worthy of an American president. Who used his birthday for a good cause.

For the American people.

Imagine that.

In fact, those celebrations once filled my imagination as a child, fueled by the stories told to me by my grandmother. While other little girls were enchanted by the story of Cinderella and her Ball, I loved hearing my Nana Sadie’s recollection of attending President Franklin Roosevelt’s Birthday Balls at the glamorous Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

For his entire presidency, FDR turned his birthdays into massive fundraisers. Known as Birthday Balls, these star-studded events were held nationwide to raise money for polio research and treatment at Warm Springs, Georgia. In his honor, they would be held every January 30th, his birthday, in cities and towns across the nation beginning in 1934.

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We once had a president who used his birthdays for a good cause. Souvenir Program Waldorf Astoria 1934. Illustration Howard Chandler Christy

That first year of the Birthday Balls, more than 6,000 dances were held around the country, celebrating President Roosevelt’s 52nd birthday.

The tagline for the events? “Dance So That Others May Walk.” And nowhere was the dancing more elegant than at New York’s glamorous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue, where they danced into the midnight hours for a good cause- to end the scourge of polio.

The dazzling gala drew thousands of sophisticated attendees in white tie and evening gowns, including my grandparents, Sadie and Arthur Joseph.

Unlike Cinderella, no Fairy Godmother was waving a magic wand, bestowing tickets to the ball for this Brooklyn couple.

My grandfather, Arthur, had worked tirelessly on the Roosevelt 1932 Presidential campaign as a fundraiser and was active in the Kings County Democratic organization. By 1934, his dedicated service had earned him not only an invitation to the Inaugural Ball but a place among the thousands who attended the Birthday Ball.

As a child, I loved flipping through my grandmother’s old leather-bound photo album, the thick black paper pages gently crumbling, and the fading photos held in place by black paper corners. One lone snapshot of my grandparents, taken by my mother’s 12-year-old sister Judy, was the only documentation of the Birthday Ball, the description written in silver ink.

The memories lasted longer than any photo.

In the sepia-toned photo, this couple from Crown Heights dressed to the nines looked like the epitome of Café Society.

In a dress worthy of Cinderella, my grandmother would describe in detail her outfit for the ball, bringing to life the faded image in the photograph. Purchased at Bonwit Teller for the occasion, the dress was a midnight blue, bias-cut silk satin gown by Mainbocher, trimmed with silver beading.  Accented with a long strand of cultured pearls and diamond clip brooches, elbow-length white kidskin gloves, and a silver fox, she sure looked swellegant.

Standing next to her, my grandfather was equally dapper in his Hickey Freeman white tie, with the black wool tailcoat and white pique waistcoat, starched shirt and wing collar, mother-of-pearl studs, white gloves, and black silk top hat.

Taxi Ride

There was no pumpkin turned into a carriage to take them to the ball, but they had reserved a roomy, streamlined taxi for the night to take them across the East River from their Brooklyn home on Montgomery Street to midtown Manhattan.

Lucky for them, because the very next week would see a city-wide taxi riot leading to violence and a strike. Depression weary cab drivers rioted, dragging out passengers, smashing windows, and ripping doors off the cabs.

Arriving at the famed hotel, they were greeted by the uniformed doorman beneath the Waldorf’s bronze and glass entrance. The doormen in their iconic military-inspired design of maroon coats paired with gold accents, braided detail, and peaked caps, set the standard for luxury hotels during this era.

Waldorf Astoria made the 1930s NYC skyline unique

The Art Deco hotel on Park Avenue had only opened in that location three years earlier, in 1931.

The luxurious hotel had originally opened on Fifth Avenue in 1897. When it relocated to its iconic Art Deco home on Park Avenue,  it was at the time the largest and tallest hotel in the world. The original Fifth Avenue location was demolished in 1929 to make way for the construction of the Empire State Building, which opened in 1931.

“New York Daily News,” Jan. 31, 1934 Coverage of the FDR Birthday Ball at the Waldorf Astoria

At the star-studded event, the president’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, was the guest of honor, who attended on his behalf.  Other luminaries were entertainer Rudy Vallee and Mayor LaGuardia. The champagne and cocktails flowed and could be served legally with the repeal of Prohibition.

A highlight of the evening, my grandmother would gush, was the parading of a five-tiered presidential birthday cake onto the Waldorf Astoria ballroom floor. The confectionery masterpiece was surrounded by fifty-two NYC debutantes, gowned in shimmering white satin and ruffles of white chiffon, wearing birthday cake-shaped hats and carrying two-foot-long white candles “lit by the latest in portable battery gadgets.”

One girl for each year in the President’s life. These young girls were living symbols of a nation’s love and admiration for its president.

On the stage, the girls formed themselves into the shape of a birthday cake, holding the candles straight up over their heads and lighting them from concealed electric batteries.

Mrs. Roosevelt ceremoniously cut the birthday cake. The debutantes chanted a happy birthday song, toasts were made, and the candles were auctioned off.

For the main event, Broadway legend George M.Cohan  performed a new Roosevelt anthem entitled “The Happiest Birthday I’ve Ever Known” for the thousands of attendees:

“What a lucky day for the U.S.A. / What a man, how he leads the way / What a heart, what a mind, what a plan / What a blessing to the nation, what a man!” 

The message of goodwill to the President symbolized what was going on all over the country at the same time.

The first President’s Birthday Ball raised over one million dollars, nationwide, for the cause of infantile paralysis. ( Twenty One  million in today’s dollars )

Radio Address

At 11:30, Franklin Roosevelt made a live radio address with a personal message of thanks; a broadcast that would be heard in the auditoriums, ballrooms, halls, and camps hosting the celebrations.

A hush fell over the festivities, my grandmother recalled,  at the first sound of Roosevelt’s voice. To the thousands in attendance, their “Mr. President” may have been the absent guest of honor, but this New Deal President was there in spirit, and his radio address was applauded by a receptive and united audience.

Overwhelmed by the outpouring of affection and admiration, he thanked them all for their support and also shared encouragement for the cause so close to his heart.

“Let us well remember that every child and indeed every person who is restored to useful citizenship is an asset to the country and is enabled “to pull his own weight in the boat.” In the long run, by helping this work we are contributing not to charity but to the building up of a sound Nation. . . I am with you all in spirit and in the promotion of this great cause for which we all are crusading.”

He concluded by thanking his vast audience, “but lack the words to tell you how deeply I appreciate what you have done and I bid you good night on what is to me the happiest birthday I have ever known.”

Postscript

Franklin Delano Memorial in Washington DC with his beloved dog Fala. “What a blessing to the nation, what a man!” 

The clock struck midnight, but the magic of Franklin Roosevelt did not end, either for the Ball or for the good works that Roosevelt did for this country. FDR’s legacy has underpinned our modern American social safeguards and economic framework.

They are the foundation of everything that Trump is now taking a wrecking ball to.

The contrast could not be starker.

FDR was a man who assured us, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Donald  Trump does nothing but weaponize fear.

A few weeks ago was my mother Betty’s yartzeit. 18 years. My mother has now been gone the length of my entire childhood. Those first 18 years seemed like an eternity as I was growing up.

A lifetime, in fact.

Yet now 18 years seems to have passed in a flash. It could be 8 years, or sometimes it feels like 18 months.

Grief time doesn’t follow physics.

Eighteen years ago this summer, a few months after she died, I created a special memorial for my mother on her Bastille Day birthday.

An eternal memorial garden.  And now, with her 100th birthday coming up, a new poignancy is added. That garden is gone.

As it seems to happen daily, images of my former home pop up in social media memories. This week, the image of a rose-covered arbor brings with it a deep association with my mother.

For 2 decades, every Sunday in the spring and summer, my parents drove 30 minutes from my childhood home in West Hempstead, where they still lived, to spend the day with me in my gardens.

With every visit to my home, my mother’s face would light up as she walked through that arbor that led to my patio and verdant back property. Leaning on her metal walker with the iridescent green tennis balls adorning the legs, she would break out into a deep smile, her blue eyes wide with child-like wonder as she surveyed the lushness in front of her and exclaim: “It’s a Mechaye!” ( Yiddish for joy, extreme pleasure.)

By the simple act of walking through that perfumed rose and honeysuckle arbor, enveloped by beauty, her stress would melt, her physical pains seemingly disappear, and she would be at peace. Nothing gave me more pleasure than giving this to my mother.

Urban Dreams

When I lived in a penthouse in the city, I had a large terrace and filled it with dozens and dozens of containers, planters, and window boxes filled with shrubs, roses, and flowering perennials that I tended with great care. My mother delighted in sitting in this urban garden. When I moved to Huntington,  I knew I couldn’t leave my plants behind, so my mother hired a special truck to transport them to my new home.

How My Garden Grows

On the early September day in 2001, when I moved to Long Island from the city, my parents were at my new house to greet Hersh and me. When the truck arrived with my many urban plants, what had seemed like such a large garden on my penthouse terrace was suddenly so small in comparison to the acres of land they now rested on.

In time, they dug in their roots just as I would.

We all looked around at the vast bareness as we set up a table outside on the dirt to share the first meal, which my mother brought for us.  There was no brick patio, gunite pool, no fences, no shrubs, no plants, no lawn, just some overgrown weeds. Everyone saw a vacant lot, but in my mind, it was a blank canvas, a place for me to create. I shared my visions with my mother as we ate, and as with every other art endeavor, I did, she was enthusiastic

I would nurture and care for the plants and the land in the ways my mother always took care of me.

Garden Memorial 

The summer after my mother died, I held a memorial celebration of her life at my home on her birthday. I asked each friend and family member who attended to bring a plant that I would plant in her honor.

She would live on forever in my garden.

That afternoon, we gathered in a large circle in my back lawn, the 60 or more plants sitting in the center. At the very end of the service, we went around the circle, and each person shouted out in their distinctive voice: “It’s a  Mechaye”

The following week, I set about planting all the new flora, relying on my skills as a collage artist to find the proper place in my already overfilled garden. My hope had been that these plants would grow and watch over me, as I watched over them- my mother’s presence always felt.

A living, ever-growing testament to her love.

When I lost the house a few years ago, it broke my heart, leaving this part of the garden, but it felt like her spirit would always be there to keep an eye on my garden and to live on.

Now the Betty Edelstein garden is destroyed, along with everything else I created on that land. In some ways, this cuts the deepest.

Today, along with all the landscape, there is no longer any arbor to walk through. That, too, was removed by the new owners. My land is no longer a Mechaya!

Grief Miracles

But then there are grief miracles.

Something I have learned to look for.

My mother made her presence known as I was writing this piece.

On Sunday morning, as I looked out my office window, I noticed morning glories creeping up the side of my house, entwining the entrance to my office. These trumpet-shaped flowers had not been there the day before and were making their first appearance at this address.  They must have been stowaways from my former home, refugee seeds sneaking in on any number of clay pots filled with plant life that I brought with me. They lay dormant for the past year.  But seeing these old friends reminded me of my mother.

I spoke to my mother every morning, and in the spring and summer, I would sit out on my upstairs balcony to chat on the phone with her while watching the morning glories appear. The morning cheer of these flowers climbing the trellis echoed the joy of speaking to my mother.

It’s been 18 years since I could pick up the phone to speak to my mother, something I took for granted those first 18 years, when more often than not it was a phone call to pick me up from school. I miss her sweet, gentle voice with the subtle New York accent, though I have been told I only have to listen to my own distinctive voice to hear hers.

But I channel her words in my mind every day.

For 18 years, she was always there when I stumbled. And for decades after that.

In these 18 years, I have stumbled, often, but the encouragement and love my mother gave me every single day helped me up again.

She still does.

My Mother’s love grew in my Garden. Today was tangible proof that it continues to bloom.

Today, remembering my mother is a mechaye.

Kennedy Campaign Worker in tears 1968

Robert F. Kennedy represented hope.

But on June 6, 1968, a nation was left once more to watch and grieve and wonder after another senseless act of violence robbed us of that hope.

The GE alarm clock in my bedroom set to get me up in time to catch the school bus didn’t go off, as usual, that morning of June 5th, 1968.

Instead, my mother came into my bedroom and sat on the edge of my bed. She woke me and softly said: “Sally, darling, your friend Bobby Kennedy has been shot.”

There was an odd symmetry. It had been I, only five years earlier who had raced home from grade school to breathlessly announce to my mother that John Kennedy had been shot. Now, it was she telling me as I headed to school that another Kennedy had been assassinated.

I was in disbelief, as the elated sense of hope that had been Bobby suddenly drained away.

June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy and his wife Ethel after his acceptance speech winning the California Primary.

Only the night before, hope beamed in black in white as I had watched the last day of the California presidential primary which had seemed a certain win for Kennedy.

I had gone to sleep certain of his victory.

I never met Robert Kennedy but I was always grateful that I get a chance to volunteer on his campaign. In the tumultuous spring of 1968, Bobby Kennedy beckoned the youth of America to join him in his presidential fight.

Mobilized and energized with the earnestness of a 13-year-old I responded.

Hand made poster RFK

Every day after school that spring, my best friend Karen and I rode our Schwinn bicycles to the local Robert Kennedy for President headquarters where we volunteered. Located in an abandoned suburban storefront, I would spend my afternoons and weekends stuffing envelopes making phone calls, and doing whatever grunt work was needed to help ensure that Bobby would be the 1968 Democratic candidate.

Bobby was all about hope.

That morning of June 5,  I awoke shattered.

Unlike John Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Bobby didn’t die immediately. He lingered for 24 hours.

On that long day, it felt as though being in a nightmare we couldn’t wake from. For over 24 hours we were in limbo. Hope was in limbo,

Throughout the day his press secretary Frank Mankiewicz updated the media on his condition at times sounding encouraging saying “his life signs remain good.” We hung on to every report with bated breath as he underwent a 4-hour surgery. He was breathing on his own we were told.

Hope returned.

Later in the day, hope began to dim, as the reports were more discouraging. At 10 pm President Lyndon Johnson went on television telling Americans he was “as shocked, shocked and dismayed as you are” and announced a commission to study “the causes and prevention of violence.”

I went to sleep knowing hope was in critical condition.

55 years later it still is.

Vintage ad NY Times July 1969

The following year when I was 14, I saw a startling full-page ad that ran in the New York Times in July of 1969. It was now one year after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and 6 years after the shooting of President John Kennedy. Under photos of my fallen heroes the powerful headline  read:

” Hold onto this page for 1 year and hope and pray it’s ended.”

“The trouble is hoping and praying isn’t enough. Violence won’t end unless you’re willing to start the ending.”

I had saved it all these years, and clearly, the violence hadn’t ended. It had escalated. Half a century later it was time to use this aging piece of paper.

As the Featured artist “Ending Gun Violence- It’s About Time-Hope and Prayers Arent Enough” will be part of the exhibit “Absurdity In Dada We Trust” at The Art Center Highland Park, Illinois, on June 23-August 5, 2023.

I created “Ending Gun Violence -Its About Time-Hope and Prayers Arent Enough”

Surrounding the ad on the canvas, I had handwritten all the hundreds of mass shootings since that newspaper advertisement ran. When I made this piece in 2019 more than 400 people had been shot in over 230 school shootings. It would now take more than one canvas to fill the number that has happened since I created this.

The violence continues.

But the hope only diminishes.

Click Below to watch Video of the story behind that vintage ad

Click to Watch  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ds51g2JFoRR0vd-ZrC2GlTk-RPfDbZEe/view?usp=drive_link

I was four years old in 1959, when I first dressed up as Marilyn Monroe, and it would follow me to my freshman year at Syracuse University, where I regularly roamed the halls of my dorm, decked out as the blonde bombshell.

Not for a party. Not for an event.

For no other reason than it was what I always enjoyed doing.

I was just me being me.

Being Marilyn.

From the moment I saw an incandescent Marilyn Monroe on the big screen in Some Like it Hot at the tender age of 3 ½, my mother Betty, knew her little girl had a special affinity for Marilyn. One that would last a lifetime. Always keen to my interests, Mom was the first to purchase a platinum blonde wig for me, just as she would eagerly buy a brown mustache for my alter ego, Pierre, the Parisienne artist.

Pierre, it seems, liked to cross-dress.

As a pre-schooler, I could often be found sashaying around the house dressed up like the blonde bombshell. Donning a platinum blonde wig and clumsily applying my mother’s Revlon Cherries in the Snow red lipstick, I would stuff my stretchy Danskin tops with balled-up anklet socks to try to recreate the same sexy allure.

In a world without iPhones, few pictures exist to document this part of my life, yet it remains vivid forever.

In the winter of 1959, my parents took me to my first theatrical movie, Some Like It Hot. Seeing Marilyn Monroe, larger than life, a luminous creature undulating on the screen in the dark, was unlike anything I had ever seen.

Marilyn Monroe was the very first movie star I ever saw on the big screen, and her image has been imprinted in my heart and soul for 68 years.  The movie was filmed in black and white, though Marilyn made everything Technicolor.

I was not quite 4 years old, and I had never been to the movies before. A pioneering member of the TV generation, I was content to see my moving images on a small Philco TV set.

Why my parents chose to introduce their little girl to the wonders of cinema with a cross-dressing screwball adult comedy instead of Snow White, I’ll never know.

But I know I would be eternally grateful. I was hooked for life.  Even as a child, I was pulled in by the complexity of her glamour and profound vulnerability and frailty.

Sally Edelstein, L) a 70’s selfie in my bedroom with the walls covered with Marilyn pictures. (R) Jr High Marilyn

My fascination with Marilyn didn’t end in my early childhood.

The walls in my teenage suburban bedroom were filled not with posters of rock bands but with my own rock stars. Marilyn Monroe and Bobby Kennedy. As I struggled with my own emotional challenges and complexities, she became a symbol of resiliency.

Alone in my room, hours were spent playing her albums – yes, there were Marilyn Monroe Record Albums- filled with songs she sang in her films, practicing in front of the mirror until I got her pitch and cadence down perfectly. When friends came over in high school, I would slip on a Seven Year Itch style white halter dress and wig, put the album on the portable record player, and lip sync to perfection. My repertoire ran the gamut  from  “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend to “I’m Through With Love.”

A set up selfie looking in my Clairol Make Up Mirror 1971

I cared little for makeup on my own. In Junior High, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Yardley Slicker lipstick among my belongings. But I’d stare into my Clairol True to Light makeup mirror, attempting to get the Marilyn Maybeline eyeliner just right.

Marilyn Makes the Scene at Syracuse

Sally Edelstein at Syracuse University in 1973, with friend and makeup artist Peter Brown. The sight of me walking the dorm halls decked out as Marilyn became a common site.

Packing for college was a no-brainer. Along with my regulation polyester  Huckapoo shirts and Landlubber bell bottoms, I had packed several wigs and outfits, including a vintage gold lame dress and matching 1950s gold lame spike heels.

The first week of school at Syracuse University in 1973 was overwhelming.

Nerves and insecurities were kicking into high gear as we unpacked our familiar belongings in this new, unfamiliar place. As Pioneer stereo systems were being set up in dorm rooms, the recognizable sounds of “Smoke on the Water” and “Shambhala” could be heard blaring through the dorm halls day and night, bonding the students.

My new roommate poked through my meager record collection, disappointed at not finding at least one Allman Brothers album.

While other kids my age were unpacking their albums that invariably included Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Deep Purple’s Who Do We Think We Are, my collection of vinyl consisted of Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall, The Best of Barbara Streisand, and several Marilyn Monroe Albums, including the soundtrack to Some Like It Hot.

My roommate eyed me warily. Was she rooming with a gay man?

Yes, while others my age went to the dark side of the moon with Pink Floyd, I was happy to be sitting in the darkened room lit up with the light that was Marilyn Monroe. It wasn’t long before the sight of an 18-year-old girl from Long Island dressed as Marilyn became just another day in the 70s.

Post Script

Happy Heavenly Birthday, Marilyn, 100 years old!

Marilyn never got old. Or fat. Norma Jean Baker would never need Botox or suffer a bad facelift because she never got wrinkles.

As though encased in amber, Marilyn Monroe is eternally 36.

Forever perfect.

On the same sunny Sunday that thousands of my fellow citizens gathered on the National Mall for a day-long event to “rededicate” America to Christianity, thus leaving millions of non-Christians like me out in the cold, I was told by a reader of this blog that because I am Jewish, I am not white.

Color me dismissed.

One nation under God.

A white God.

A Christian God.

Jesus Christ, help us.

It was a roller coaster weekend for me, offering the best and worst of America today.  One that began with my art exhibit “Just Power” exploring and celebrating  American Democracy and Freedom, which then ended in divisiveness and exclusion.

I wore white to the art opening despite it being before Labor Day. The white pantsuit was a nod to the suffragettes, to Hillary, and to my piece in the show “American Diversity: Whitewashed.”

The sold-out reception to the show at The Hecksher Museum, where my collage and video were exhibited, was well-received. Both questioned our assumptions of who gets to be a “real” American.

I never expected that very question would come home to roost, when an off-color remark made me question my whiteness.

Checking my email on Sunday morning as I nibbled on my usual weekend breakfast of bagels and lox, the news was on in the background, carrying “The Rededicate 250”  Christian Prayer Rally in Washington, D.C. It was clear they were pushing the narrative of a Christian founding. A country founded by Anglo-Saxons for Anglo-Saxons.

Just as I heard the shrill sound of Pete Hegseth’s voice, his remarks infused with Christian language urging the attendees to “pray for the nation on bended knee,” calling on “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” up popped an email that caught my eye.

A notification of a new comment from this site. It was in response to a post I wrote about the American Diversity collage in the show. It felt like synchronicity. But I wasn’t prepared for what I read.

A hostile comment loaded with anti-semitic assumptions from the opening salvo.

“A Jew who hates whites?” the writer asked sarcastically. “Will wonders never cease?”

According to this reader, as a Jew, I’m not white.  As a Jew, I’m more off white. This centuries-old trope has been resurrected with all the hate and antisemitism unleashed under Trump.

Was I just whitewashed out of being a real American by a white supremacist?

I’m an American Jew

When I was in Hebrew school in the early 1970s, an ongoing debate worthy of a Talmudic scholar concerned how we were to identify ourselves. Am I an American Jew, or a Jewish American? There were nuances to both arguments.

One identity I never questioned or argued about was whether I was “white.”

It was clear that this reader did not think of my ancestors as white like his.

And in the nineteenth century, he wouldn’t be wrong. For generations, Jews were marginalized, and the issue of race was up for debate. It was a murky area between black and white. And it seemed Jews were more beige than white.

As the anthropologist Karen Brodkin put it in “How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America” we were like many immigrant groups, members of a less-than-white race,” that had been “assigned to the not-fully white side of the racial spectrum.”

When it came to the great American definer “ skin color,”  one theory went that“the Semitic type is the link between the Negro and the Aryan.”

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, there was a steady stream of warnings by scientists, policymakers, and the popular press, warning that the “mongrelization” of the Anglo-Saxon race- the real Americans- by inferior European races ( as well as inferior non-European ones) was destroying the fabric of the nation.

I grew up in an unusual period of post war America, where antisemitism lay dormant. Jews became part of the American story in that era. But my parents’ generation was right to believe that anti-Semitism never really left …that it was just a matter of time.

Now, under Trump, the antisemitism that lay dormant has come out from under the rocks.

Emboldened white supremacists are tearing at the fabric of democracy, as entitled  white Americans are frightened by the browning of America

We saw it in August 2017 when white supremacists descended on Charlottesville, where they held 2 days of racist rallies. During these events, white supremacists chanted anti-Semitic slogans falsely claiming Jewish people had tricked people into believing they are white and blamed Jews for all racial problems in the U.S.

The weekend may have ended by being reminded I am praying to the wrong  God.

But I will be praying to God for the safety of this country.

Just not the right one.

They didn’t give their lives to live in a dictatorship.

They didn’t give their lives to a country that would turn against its people, deprive them of resources, finances, and health care.

They didn’t give their lives to a country that would attack civil liberties, allow masked thugs to roam our streets, and whisk children away to live in internment camps.

For 250 years, these soldiers and sailors and marines didn’t die in Germany or Gettysburg,  so that a man like Donald Trump could erode democratic norms and undermine the rules of law.

They didn’t die for the likes of a Donald Trump.

Neither should we.

They didn’t die so that the beacon of democracy would go dark.

It is up to us to save what they gave their lives for.

Late last night,  Donald Trump, our very unpresidential president, posted an AI-generated video showing him tossing Steven Colbert into a dumpster in yet another childish outburst mocking his enemies.

The video, posted to Truth Social, shows Colbert onstage for the taping of the last episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” before Trump walks up behind him, grabs him by his shoulders, and tosses him into a dumpster.

Trump closes the lid to the dumpster and starts dancing to the Village People’s “YMCA.”

What a piece of trash, Trump is.

Trump had already celebrated the end of The Late Show, which concluded on Thursday night, calling him  “like a dead person” and a “total jerk.”

It was hard not to contrast this to another time when CBS canceled a politically provocative show and the response of another president.

In the late 1960s, no one pushed boundaries better than the Smothers Brothers, Dick and Tommy, on their CBS show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

The topics are as timely today.

So was the pushback.

CBS would routinely try to censor segments of the show, but by doing so, they were undermining the very audience that had made it a hit.

It wasn’t long before Network bosses were getting complaints from top politicians.

Including the President, Lyndon Johnson, who was endlessly taken to task by the brothers for his handling of Vietnam.

Yet, Johnson was big enough to understand the role of satire in a healthy society. In a letter written to the Smothers Brothers dated November 8, 1968, he wrote:

“To be genuinely funny at a time when the world is in a crisis is a task that would tax the talents of a genius; to be consistently fair when standards of fair play are constantly questioned demands the wisdom of a saint.

“It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.”

 

That was the America of my youth that I witnessed and believed in. The society was flawed, it was messy, and we were getting mired in Vietnam.

However, we had a president in Lyndon Johnson who sought to eliminate poverty, reduce inequality, and enhance the quality of life for all Americans through social welfare programs and civil rights legislation.

Everything Trump is dismantling now.

Trump is perverting Johnson’s War on Poverty and turning against the people,  depriving them of resources, finances, and health care.

Today, we are watching what we never thought possible—the transformation of our democracy into a dictatorship.

What a dumpster fire Donnie is.

First they came for the comedians…

Steven Colbert’s long goodbye came to an end last night

We lost one of the nation’s funniest and most courageous, truthful critics of Donald Trump and his lawless, authoritarian regime.

Shame on you, CBS.

You will forever sport a black eye.

Our democracy will be the worse for it.

First they came for the comedians…

Colbert made us think.

He made us laugh.

Two things Donald Trump is incapable of.

“The legacy of this show needs to be that we remember it as the show that was canceled because a presidential administration wanted it off the air,” says Heather Hendershot, a professor of communication studies and journalism at Northwestern University. “We haven’t connected every single dot on that, but it’s very clear that this was a political decision. And I think 20, 30, 40 years later, that is going to be strongly remembered about this show — that this was a moment of authoritarian triumph.”

First they came for the comedians…

When a network lays off America’s greatest satirists, it’s not because they failed. It is because they succeeded too loudly.

And Steven Colbert was a resounding success.

Satirists are necessary for the health of a society.

On his very first show as host of The Late Show in 2015, Colbert ripped into Donald Trump while gorging on Oreos, likening his inability to resist the cookies to his inability to resist going after the then-presidential candidate. Over the next 11 years, Colbert couldn’t curb his appetite for Trump barbs, and his show was a brilliant rebuke of MAGA and the Trump regime.

When CBS made the shocking announcement that the Late Show franchise would end in May 2026, they claimed it was purely a financial decision. No one was buying it.

It was the first warning shot in this age of Trump censorship.

Satirists were being put on notice.

When they silence an important voice, they silence us all.

First they came for the comedians…

Looking like a skeleton is no longer just for Halloween; it’s the latest Hollywood trend on the fast track to becoming a beauty standard.

As award seasons and fashion week converged, shockingly skeletal women were walking the red carpet and sashaying down runways.

You could spot Ozempified actresses on the red carpet sporting collarbones and sternum like another accessory from Van Cleef and Arpels. We are watching the glamorization of malnourishment.

Tone Deaf

The red carpet trend that has nothing to do with clothes

The media is completely tone deaf when it recently declared Demi Moore’s emaciated arms as “toned.” What message are they sending? These arms are not “toned,” they are skeletal and anorexic.

Make no bones about it; this trend towards skeletal beauty is dangerous.

I should know. I was once anorexic.

A Bone of Contention

For decades, I was obsessed with my bones, keeping a mental checklist.

Clavicle, collar bones clear and visible; Sternums up front and at attention. Hip bones that needed to protrude sharply, distinctly lying down, and ribs that could be easily felt.

I checked and rechecked the condition of my bones.

Truth is, I still do. Ironically, despite all the attention I gave to my bones, they still ended up saddled with osteoporosis, the one thing I could not control.

As bodies disappear, the expectation that has plagued me for decades has not disappeared.

The Disappearing Body Positivity Movement

After a decade of body positivity, the pendulum is swinging back. Bodies are shrinking again.  The body positivity movement ended the second thinness became injectable.

With the introduction of weight loss drugs like Ozempic, the standard is back to thinness in a way never seen before – the ideal isn’t just skinny, it’s skeletal. And the message is trickling down to everyday women, comparing themselves to bodies that are sculpted and molded by the pharmaceutical industry.

Rather than attempting to reach a healthy body weight, the Ozempic era appears to be more of a competition to see who can get closest to emaciation.

This is the mindset of someone with an eating disorder. Women are being shepherded into anorexia by GLP-1’s.

I achieved this the old-fashioned way, without drugs.

Just a debilitating disease called Anorexia Nervosa.

© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Make America Great Again or Make America White Again?

That is the question I ask in my short, but timely video “American Diversity Whitewash” that takes apart the fake image of diversity sold to Americans for decades and how it has helped create the white-washed world of Donald Trump.

The video is based on my collage “American Diversity Whitewash,” which will be on view at The Hecksher Museum in Huntington.

Critiquing the politics of belonging, the centerpiece of the collage features a John Hancock Insurance ad from 1947 directing us to look at diversity as seen through a white-only lens. “No two families are alike,” announces the headline to this mid-century advertisement.

Yes, there is great diversity in America, the vintage ad seems to imply … that is, as long as you are white, middle-class, and Protestant.

This old-fashioned recipe for what is a real American is still used by the Trump administration and his supporters. Emboldened white supremacists are tearing at the fabric of democracy as entitled white Americans are frightened by the browning of America.

Watch Video

Reimagined as a video in collaboration with John Martin and narrated by me, it is filled with vintage ads and illustrations from my vast collection, becoming a cinematic collage.  I wanted to take the glossy myth of America as presented in the popular media of mid-century America, that mythical place that Trump wants us to return to, and tear it up frame by frame.

Using bold, unsettling visuals, I can expose the fantasy of “real Americans” that keeps resurfacing in modern politics.

What feels urgent is how these visual myths are being actively repackaged in contemporary political culture. They are being repurposed by the U.S. Department of Labor in their series of posters touting The American Dream and Our Homeland that look eerily like the vintage illustration. Relying on nostalgia and simplification, they present a version of America that is aspirational on the surface while leaving out diversity

I want to invite the viewer to look again at the images we think we already know, which, like a toxic overspill, have never really left us. Now they are being reframed and recharged in the present to shape what we believe America still is or should be.

Make America Great Again or White Again? We all know the answer as we watch the race to redistrict and return to the Jim Crow era.

We are living in a time when “Make America Great Again” means erasing who America became.

NOTE:
A special thanks to John Martin and Seth Chitwood for their invaluable skills in producing and editing.

Exhibit

I am honored to have my collage and video “American Diversity Whitewash” included in The Hecksher Museum of Art’s Long Island Biennial with the timely theme “Just Powers.”  Responding to the legacies of the Declaration of Independence, the exhibition brings together diverse perspectives of artists to reveal how democratic ideals of freedom and liberty are experienced, interpreted, challenged, and reimagined today.