Opinion|Norma Jeane’s Still Got It!

I’m excited about the big birthday celebration.

Not the crass party that President Trump is having for America’s 250th, with a hulking metal contraption on the South Lawn for the U.F.C. cage fights next weekend, and a solipsistic rally starring Trump, now that most of the “celebrities” have dropped out. (The president says that’s fine because he’s bigger than Elvis.)

For his 80th birthday, he has funneled millions meant for a bipartisan celebration of this remarkable country to a partisan celebration of his contemptible self.

L’Etat, c’est moi!

No, I’m excited about Marilyn Monroe’s centennial bash, which has been playing out across the globe, from a prestigious exhibition at a Paris film museum — “Cent Ans de Fascination” — to a show at the National Portrait Gallery in London, to a concert in Japan, to a display of costumes and personal artifacts at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in L.A., to a joyous look-alike contest with straights, gays, young, old and even bearded Marilyns in Palm Springs, home to “Forever Marilyn,” the 26-foot-tall, 34,000-pound statue of America’s icon of icons in her white-halter pleated, blowy dress from “The Seven Year Itch.”

The smart dumb blonde who sang the most notorious “Happy Birthday” of all time to President Jack Kennedy — the only public erotic event in American presidential history — is getting a very happy birthday, indeed. Norma Jeane Mortenson, who survived a mentally ill mother, a father who deserted her, 12 foster homes and some sexually abusive foster parents, a mudslide of sexual predation in Hollywood, very famous husbands who were peevish and jealous of her fame, and insensitive Kennedy brothers, is getting the love she always craved.

Starting as the 1948 Castroville, Calif., Artichoke Queen, Norma Jeane created Marilyn, putting a high gloss over deep wounds. “Marilyn’s like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane,” the actress once said. Some of her foster parents sent her to the movies to get her out of the house, and the little kid sat in front of the big screen and dreamed about a life where she was wanted.

Like her character in “Some Like It Hot,” Sugar “Kane” Kowalczyk, Marilyn often got the fuzzy end of the lollipop.