The Art Of The Cut

By Hubie and Bertie

Why did Michelle Obama not attend the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter? Why is she skipping the inauguration on Monday?

To anyone clutching their pearls about this, the answer is obvious. She wants nothing to do with Donald Trump.

At the Carter event, she would have had to sit next to him. That's how it works, folks: The current President and Vice President sit in the front row. Former Presidents sit in the next row, in order: The most recent POTUS and spouse, then the next-most-recent POTUS and spouse, and the next-next-most-recent, and on and on. There would have been nothing Michelle could have done about this, so she bowed out.

(And of course she's refusing to sit through another travesty of a swearing-in. She doesn't have to attend. In fact, we wish that other members of the former POTUS club would join her, but they won't.)

Michelle is not alone, though. Lots of tongues wagged about Vice President Harris's apparent snub of Trump at the Carter service. Later, the Vice President's Twitter account posted a photo from the funeral that omitted Benedict Donald and Moose & Squirrel, which got people riled up even further. (The Carter Center posted the same photo, by the way — like Harris, with a completely straight face.) And now we've learned that Harris will not invite JD Vance and his wife to the Naval Observatory for a courtesy visit.

Why should she? Vance called her "trash" on the campaign trail. And if we're keeping score, the Pences broke protocol first, snubbing Harris and Doug Emhoff during the last transition. (BTW, Karen Pence cold-shouldered Donald at the Carter funeral, too, and more brutally than Vice President Harris did.)

Michelle and Kamala are not only expressing their disdain. As Black women frequently have to do, they're showing us all how to handle ourselves going forward. In the words of one of our favorite social media mavens, "Michelle Obama is instinctively on the right track for how you politically approach Trump in term two. You largely ignore him, and go about your business. You deny his people what they actually want from you — your anger and frustration." We cats agree, and we PURR.

(IMAGE: Michelle on January 20, 2017, being all of us.)