Photo: Brendan Smialowski / Getty

Rule of thumb: If you are doing some shit that would not fly at your mom’s house, it is doubly inappropriate in the Oval Office. A Getty photo made the rounds this morning of professional bullshit dispenser Kellyanne Conway apparently going shoes on the damn sofa in order to get a solid shot of Donald Trump meeting with the leaders of historically black colleges and universities yesterday. This is a solid opportunity for a photo, especially given that Donald Trump is a virulent, life-long racist and has recently named an enemy of institutional education as Secretary Of Education. It’s an easy opportunity for misinformation for Conway: Look, Trump is talking to black people!


But she shit the bed, as the primary message coming out of the meeting is instead that this lady has no respect for the vanilla-hued floral upholstery.



This is all of us trying to figure out why Kelly Anne Conway is sitting on a White House couch like this pic.twitter.com/Gl4RYxAca0 — Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) February 28, 2017

It’s worth taking a step off of the sofa, if you will, to contextualize this. On the one hand, there is certainly better shit for us to be outraged about:


On the other, it shows a casual disdain for decorum that seems uniquely in line with the Trump administration’s lack of respect for black America and the crowd of esteemed intellectuals in the room. A picture is just that—a picture—but the image of Conway casually swiping through her phone rather than taking an opportunity to better understand the thoughts and concerns of some of the most important names in black thought strikes a uniquely resonant chord.


Never, in the face of white military leaders would Kellyanne Conway be on the couch, shoes off, on her knees.



Period. https://t.co/Yi0nPWtVN9 — Shaun King (@ShaunKing) February 28, 2017

Reports are that the meeting itself, billed as a “listening session” between Trump and the HBCU leaders, was equally half-assed, with each guest only granted a minute or so to air their concerns. There was not a lot of listening, but hey—Kellyanne got a solid photo!


There are also many bad photoshops of the image that you can peruse here, but science has not yet credited image editing software can make it look like Kellyanne Conway has any damn manners. Perhaps an investment in education could yield such an elusive thing.



[via Twitter Moments]