IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Why Ivanka isn’t doing a promo tour for her upcoming book
Ivanka Trump’s upcoming book is about how women reconcile their personal and professional lives — but her own juggling act is way more complicated than your average Jane’s.
The first daughter, who’s also a top adviser in her father’s administration, explained Thursday that she’s forgoing media appearances and a book tour — typically de rigeur for a highprofile author hawking a new tome - to avoid ethical missteps.
“Out of an abundance of caution and to avoid the appearance of using my official role to promote the book, I will not publicize the book through a promotional tour or media appearances,” she wrote in a Facebook post that also detailed how profits from the book will be donated to charities. The first lucky organizations are the the National Urban League and Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Trump said.
Trump’s announcement of the arrangement underscores the ongoing potential conflicts created by her multiple roles as White House aide, daughter and owner of her own fashion brand.
In the Facebook post, Trump also sought to preempt the criticism that’s likely to meet her book — the privileged scion of a family business with an army of nannies and assistants might not have much in common with the average woman wrestling with the carpool schedule.
“I realize,” Trump wrote, “that I am more fortunate than most.”
Elisabeth Moss returns to TV in Hulu’s ‘Handmaid’s Tale’
NEW YORK » “The timing has been uncanny,” says Margaret Atwood, marveling at how her 1985 novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” has not only been given renewed life as a TV series but has also gained disturbing urgency.
“Last November 7, they thought they were making a fantasy fiction series,” Atwood says. “On November 9, they thought maybe they were making a documentary.”
However you take it, “The Handmaid’s Tale” premieres Wednesday on Hulu with three episodes. The remaining seven will be released each Wednesday thereafter.
The cast includes Joseph Fiennes, Alexis Bledel and Samira Wiley, and stars Elisabeth Moss as Offred, who, as one of the few remaining fertile women in the cruel dystopia of Gilead, is among the caste of women forced into sexual servitude in a desperate attempt to repopulate a ravaged world.
Needless to say, Offred is a career stretch for Moss, who remains best known as proto-feminist copywriter Peggy Olson on the advertising drama “Mad Men,” and who initially caught the audience’s eye as First Daughter Zoey Bartlet on “The West Wing.”
During a season hiatus for “Mad Men,” Moss, 34, added to her roster of oddly relatable performances: She played an Australian police officer returning to her remote New Zealand hometown where she confronted the disappearance of a local 12-year-old girl in the acclaimed 2013 miniseries “Top of the Lake.”