Is U.S.A. ready for a first lady who posed for nude photos? That's why Vanessa Williams gave up Miss America crown

The Aug. 1 cover of the trashy New York Post shows a nude photo of Melania Knauss Trump and another woman. She also posed nude for GQ magazine in 2000. Melania, once a model, will become first lady when President-elect Donald J. Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

We're all either sick or elated over the prospect of wacko racist Donald J. Trump taking the oath of office as president of the United States.

But are we ready to see more nude photos of first lady in waiting Melania Trump from her modeling career?

As a general assignment reporter at The Record in 1984, I covered the announcement by Vanessa Williams that she was giving up her crown as the first African-American Miss America.

A few weeks prior to the end of her reign, she learned Penthouse magazine was going to publish unauthorized nude photos of her.

I recall a noisy scene -- a media zoo, in fact -- in a large room at the Hilton Hotel in Manhattan as reporters waiting for her announcement passed around an advance copy of the magazine with nude photos of Williams posing with another woman.

Then, TV cameramen shouted for other reporters to get out of the way, and one TV reporter pulled down to the carpeted floor a still photographer who was standing on a chair.

After her announcement, Williams turned around and escaped through a hotel kitchen.

So, maybe Melania should be denied the title of first lady for the same reason.

Today's paper

Is Trump actually averting the gaze of President Obama in the large photo on Page 1 of The Record today?

The USA Today reporter who wrote the story of the White House meeting calls them "intense rivals who defined the volatile 2016 election" (A-1).

But if you really want a sense of what happened, you need to read The New York Times, which called the Oval Office meeting "once unimaginable."

"It brought together a president who has darkly warned that Mr. Trump could not be trusted with the nuclear codes and a successor who rose to political prominence questioning Mr. Obama's birthplace and legitimacy."

Local news?

What's the story about Loretta Weinberg calling for the impeachment of Governor Christie doing on the Local front today?

Weinberg, the Senate majority leader in the state Legislature, said impeachment proceedings should be started now that Christie was fingered by several witnesses at the Bridgegate trial of two of his former aides, who were convicted of all charges (L-1).

Christie's repeated denials clash with testimony that he knew about the George Washington Bridge lane closings before, during and after they caused five mornings of gridlock in Fort Lee in September 2013.

Putting the story in the local-news section is terrible editorial judgment, but not a surprise to readers who have watched The Record decline in quality and accuracy in the last eight years.