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Nokhshleper

 



Is Ivanka Trump, as Brian Leiter suggests, the "nokhshlepper" of the Trump clan, someone who attaches herself to a crowd where she isn't wanted, and perhaps in sublime ignorance of the fact that she is not wanted?

I suppose cultural anthropologists (many of whom presumably care about the Yiddish vocabulary) will benefit in the years to come by watching the Trump clan and its reaction to its change in fortune, and come to an understanding of who the various labels fit. This might help us all deal with such dysfunctional clans in less debilitating ways in the future. 

In the meantime....

My own most vivid memory of Ivanka is of a piece of film from some gathering of high muckamucks in which she was clearly delighted to be in the same room with such important women on the world stage as Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde. That is Lagarde to the right of Ivanka in both of the above shots. These accomplished women in the room didn't and don't seem to have been at all as interested in being in the same room with her, though. She was there as a First Daughter of somebody whom they had to regard as important. So they had to be nice to her. They weren't thrilled by it.

That, I gather, is what makes her a nokhslepper.    

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