In keeping with a tradition of offering simpleton solutions to complex problems when talking to the commoners that goes back at least as far as Nancy Reagan telling teens to “just say no” to drugs, Ivanka (“Giggles”) Trump has launched the Find Something New campaign for the freshly jobless.

    Step mommy Melania must be beaming in the seven languages she actually doesn’t speak at this notion. She, after all, came up with Be Best for her anti-bullying campaign launched after she realized she was married to the world’s biggest.

    While naysayers have criticized Ivanka as “clueless,” “out of touch with reality” and “as insensitive as Marie Antoinette,” I believe they are being … too kind.

    Jeepers, sis. Cozying up to a can of racist beans was bad enough but now Find Something New?

    You first, please. I have previously suggested Ivanka pull a couple of late-night shifts at Waffle House and now’s the time. She can wear a cute nametag that says “Vonkie” and speak the sacred language of scattered and smothered, chunked and capped. I realize this is going to be a lot harder than prissing about and telling whatever young Stephen Miller clone who is trying to write her speeches to “just make me sound human” but it’s worth the effort!

    Rebranding is exhausting. Just ask Trump family friend Ghislane Maxwell who will most likely never get that chain of afterschool day camps for girls up and running now. Thoughts and prayers.

    Find Something New. As a tattered nation hopes to do exactly that along about Jan. 20, 2021, perhaps Vonkie is onto something here. Just not in the way she intended: to placate millions of unemployed Americans who now also have to worry about being evicted or endangering their kids by sending them to school.

    If you check out the website, as I did, you’ll find lots of skills assessment stuff, some dating back to 2005 because nothing says “I Care” like 15-year-old job advice. The news wasn’t all bad. To be fair, in the name of journalism– a field I highly respect and occasionally participate in– I completed a skills quiz that, in the words of that great American patriot Jethro Bodine, deduced I would excel in either brain surgery or streetcar conducting.

    Well. It was almost that bad. After clicking on a few filters, eliminating jobs that required “physical strength” and “not being mostly sedentary,” the skills match indicated I’d make a good “poet.” Yeah. That’ll pay the bills with enough left over for cat food. For the poet.

    One hiccup: I accidentally clicked on a quiz for kids and didn’t realize it until the final question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Grow up? Must I? Deal. Breaker.

    There’s nothing wrong with getting training for a better job. The problem is when the advice comes from someone who, as the saying goes, was born on third base and thinks she hit a triple.

 

    Celia Rivenbark is so starved for human interaction she gets irrationally excited when Microsoft Word says, “Welcome back!”