Donald and Melania Trump dance at an inauguration ball. Photo/AP
The hostage crisis continues. Melania's slanty eyes mutely beg for deliverance, but despite so many thousands of women marching on Washington last weekend against her husband, none thought to arrange her rescue.
The opportunity was lost, and instead we focus on her frocks. To be fair, they are interesting, but nothing compared to the humanitarian mission that would have been a kindness.
The pale blue frock, I thought, made her look cluttered on top, and bosomy. I didn't much like it.
My vote goes to the white pillar she wore to the three balls she had to attend, one after the other, after Donald Trump's inauguration, while a guard of secret service men shielded her from escape to somewhere happy, where she'd get to share in the conversation instead of listening to endless monologues, and wouldn't have to write poems in praise of her husband's unflagging virility and dashing good looks on demand.
The white frock had the slit up the side that Melania favours, a hint of the glamour model she once was, a subtle titillation and signal she'd be fit and able to leap up on a saddle behind a hero and hang on for dear life to ride to freedom. Or even on to a Harley.
Incidentally what miracle cloth was that dress made of, that didn't crease or rumple even after the unfortunate chump she married made his clumsy way around the dance floor with her three excruciating times at three different locations?
One headline claimed Trump was waltzing. As if. He walked the beautiful Melania around while music played with the finesse of a Rumplestiltskin, the one and only time I have ever related to him.
In the ballroom dance lessons of the third form I discovered my own utter lack of grace, and inability to pick up a dance rhythm accurately. It must be the McLeod gene, he and I being distant relations through his mother, a fellow McLeod.
I said distant.
To return to the crime at hand, the world knows Melania is kept prisoner in the gilded Trump Tower, only allowed out of her cage to take her son to school in the morning, and supervised even then by secret service men watching her every move.
That done, she faces a gruelling schedule of workouts with her personal trainer, sessions with her makeup artist, hair treatments from her Trump-approved private hairdresser, and hand and foot manicures before stepping into a suntan capsule to keep her golden tan fresh. She can only gaze out the windows of the penthouse at the sky and the clouds, and wonder why she, of all unfortunate beauties, was chosen to share the life of a buffoon claiming to be President of the United States.
The Trump penthouse is so far up in the sky that 100 silk sheets knotted together wouldn't be long enough for her to slither down and make a getaway, and even if she grew totally desperate the guards wouldn't let her leap.
There is a reason why Melania so seldom smiles, other than the gracious insincere smile of the socialite, and looks like a trapped possum. It's not that her teeth are lousy, but that she is miserable, and wonders how on earth this calamity happened. She seems less like a doll when she rustles up a real smile, like the one she beams out to any handy knight in shining armour, closer to her in age, who could dance the quickstep without getting puffed, and has all his own hair.
What about Brad Pitt, who's on the loose now? But more likely Putin, Trump's beloved brother-from-another-mother, will woo her away on a state visit to Russia and lock her up in the Kremlin.
Then the Third World War would start, and she'd be a new Helen of Troy. The Trump election has that epic feel about it.
We think beautiful women have it easy, but what do we know? They cause wars. They are forced to marry unattractive old men with tons of money because no one else will have them. Thereafter they become their old men's accessories, wearing the sparkly baubles they're given, lighting their cigars, and sharing their beds.
Imagine the snoring at Trump Towers in the dead of night, let alone the constant tweeting. No wonder Melania looks desperate. He won't let her get a wink of sleep.