Natalie the Shunammite
At the end of his life, King David is shredded. Not in the sense of buff or virile but pulped by a life variously lived. Despite his successes in statecraft and on the battlefield, nothing is as he would want it to be. His beloved son, Absalom, is a knife-struck corpse, lost to David through rebellious ambition. All of his wives have disappeared, except for Bathsheba, who gaslights her husband, manipulating Solomon into the line of succession. God keeps David from building a temple in Jerusalem. His hands are too filthy with the blood of his enemies to be allowed to make contact with the Holy of Holies. David is barely sentient at the end. I think of him as a cold, incontinent, depleted husk.
The fix is Abishag, a mysterious bedwarmer. She enters the narrative as another Shunammite, the quintessential Other, a fellow traveler in antiquity. Shunammites are not quite Them, but not Us. To use Maggie Haberman’s now famous phrase, she is the old king’s “binky,” shoved between his gums. I imagine her in a sheath dress, until she undresses. She is ever present in the presence of the king, blonde, blue-eyed, supremely available. She sprints after David’s golf cart on the grounds of the palace, or would if David were not infirm and bedridden. All she needs is a portable printer. I wish that I could share in the feminist discourse about her, the Biblical interpreters who give her not just devotion, but agency. But she remains for me just as the Bible describes her. She warms the body of the decrepit king.
Anybody thinking about Natalie Harp? Given the revelations pouring from the White House, it would be impossible to avoid the association with Abishag. This is not an allegation of sexual impropriety, but the next worst thing: self-abasement, cringe, and slavish prostration. Trump’s prurient interest in servile blonde knock-outs is one of the best-known features of his creepy deviance, but Natalie takes us to a whole new level. Even Abishag commands more dignity. She is the final destination of a strain in our culture that sees Gloria Steinem as the beginning of the end. The job of a woman is to serve her man, not as a professional, but as a kittenish confidant: “I never want to bring you anything but joy. I’m sorry I lost my focus. You are all that matters to me….We shouldn’t have to talk about work all the time.” Even her brother thinks that Natalie Harp is nuts.
There is, of course, an element of pathos here. How did Donald Trump become Natalie’s “Guardian” and “Protector”? During the horror show of his first administration, he apparently passed legislation that benefitted her personally. Sick with cancer, she got a second chance in an experimental regimen that addressed her illness. It seems off brand for Donald Trump, but I’m glad she got the benefit of the program. I have to force myself to remember that a bad man can do good.
But if there is truly good news here, the only reason we know about Harp and the self-obliterating messages she sent to her Savior is that someone in this administration made sure to tell us. That means gathering up a pile of misplaced papers and handing them over to someone in the press. It’s the kind of thing that happened often in Round I but has been less of a feature in the second administration.
I would like to think that this is a sign of things to come. Someone finally lost patience with a crazy-pants worshipper who serves her cult leader by providing access to foreign leaders. Harp is a bizarre, back-channel conduit to a president who thrives on adulation and cannot identify a threat. This is a presidency that is deteriorating by the hour and will soon give way to better days ahead. The scribe who recorded the story of Abishag could not have had David’s reputation in mind. The same must be true for Natalie Harp’s leaker.
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If you’re looking for evidence of artificial intelligence, you won’t find it here. I’ve been muscling through an episode of food poisoning to get this prepped for Monday morning, but resisted the temptation to have some other entity write it. Hooray for humans?