If you’re looking for a simple answer to the question “Why do so many people hate the media?” all you have to do is turn your attention to this week’s hullabaloo over Melania Trump’s shoes.

On Tuesday, the first lady of the United States boarded an airplane bound for hurricane Harvey-ravaged Texas, rocking sky-high snakeskin pumps. Not surprisingly, minutes after photos of this spectacle hit the internet, thousands of observers wondered why the first lady didn’t don a getup a little more practical for the purpose of entering a disaster zone. What kind of person, Twitter wanted to know, wears stilettos into the eye of a storm? The Trump kind, of course.

In addition to sheer disbelief, the first lady’s flashy footwear provoked something else: catty condemnation from journalists. For example, Vogue magazine, a publication I would have pegged as a natural ally to the first lady on a subject like this, was one of many outlets to make the case that not only are heels impractical in a disaster context: they are insensitive, too.

“But what kind of message,” wrote Lynn Yaeger in Vogue, “does a fly-in visit from a First Lady in sky-high stilettos send to those suffering the enormous hardship, the devastation of this natural disaster?” Here’s Robin Givhan in the Washington Post, no less judgmental about Trump’s footgear. “And for her trip to Texas,” Givhan writes, “the first lady offered up a fashion moment instead of an expression of empathy.”

Read more:

First lady Melania Trump praises ‘strength and resilience’ of Texans

‘Texas can handle anything’: Trump offers reassurances on Harvey recovery

Melania Trump thanks Chelsea Clinton for defending Barron after website criticizes his clothes

At the risk of defending a woman who stands for nothing I like, I have to ask, why can’t a person offer up both things — fashion and empathy — at the same time? Why are fashion and empathy mutually exclusive? Is it really impossible to help people, dressed your best? (I guess Princess Diana never got the memo.)

But more to the point, I think it’s time we finally laid to rest the expectation that leaders and their spouses dress for a part they will never realistically play. Does anyone honestly expect that a head of state and his wife are going to enter the fray, as relief workers, swimming down the street plucking stray cats from the floodwaters?

Though she did change into tennis shoes upon arrival in Texas, I’m pretty sure that Melania Trump is perfectly capable of doing in five-inch heels what most politicians and their spouses do in disaster zones: hand out blankets and juice boxes and occasionally pose for photos with traumatized people who would rather be anywhere else.

It’s no wonder so many people on social media have come to the first lady’s defence, cursing the mainstream media and leaving angry comments under editorials mocking her shoes. Some on the left appear incapable of recognizing that it is media preoccupation with the first lady’s shoes — not the shoes themselves — that many people find repulsive. They are repulsed because devoting so much space to Trump’s lack of sensible footwear implies that hurricane victims whose belongings are literally swimming away actually give a crap about wardrobe etiquette.

Of course, it would be a different story entirely if the Washington Post were on the ground in Texas asking local residents “How are you holding up?” and the general consensus was: “We’d be a whole lot better if Melania Trump was wearing galoshes.” But to my knowledge no one has said this, which makes the media condemnation of the first lady’s footwear appear cynical, spiteful and disingenuous.

So why do we — the media — do it? Why do journalists appear to turn every meme and every series of irreverent tweets into a full-blown news cycle? We do it because we think we have to. We do it because our industry is facing a disaster all its own (extinction) and editors are pressured to latch onto anything and everything “people are talking about” in hopes of racking up clicks and squeezing whatever revenue they can from a viral moment.

This situation isn’t helped by the fact that the president of the United States regularly devalues our work and labels it false and irrelevant, a.k.a., “Fake News!”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

But when we take the viral bait, when we make fun of his wife’s shoes under the guise that we are expressing genuine concern for disaster victims, we make it way too easy for him to devalue us. And the end result is that we are, in fact, less relevant, and more loathed than before.

Emma Teitel is a national affairs columnist.

Read more about: