The Obsolete Handmaid in Charge

I subscribe to more magazines than I can possibly absorb, at least in their entirely. Often, I read one particularly interesting article and then pitch it. I don't have time to do more, especially if I do something like this, too.

I also keep some articles around for reading even months after publication with an I'll-get-to-it attitude because I might need it for something that's come up. Sometimes, I'm kidding myself and end up tossing it. Other times, though, articles re-emerge with distinct timing. So it was that I took out a copy of The New Yorker to read a profile piece on Sarah Huckabee Sanders, written by Paige Williams for an issue last September.

Sanders, as we all now know, is leaving her White House press secretary position to return to her native Arkansas, a place I have some knowledge of, having lived there for two and a half years early in this decade. Its politics, like those of my home state of Wisconsin, have turned particularly bitter, ugly, and divisive. And, like Wisconsin, the Republicans are in firm control, Wisconsin's recent election of Tony Evers as governor not withstanding because his reforms are being stifled by a strong, gerrymander-arranged majority in the state legislature which is making the budget revert to what it's been the last eight years under Mr. F. Gow (should you need a translation, please see my blog of 6/3/19).

Sanders' father, Mike Huckabee, is perched near the center of that bitterness. He gave politics a sharp right turn after Bill and Hillary Clinton left for the White House in the '90s. His skill with words hid, or attempted to gloss over, a deep evangelical commitment against abortion and gay marriage--one that his daughter shares.

Sanders, Williams pointed out, has worked on the campaign of Senator Tom Cotton, a hyper-militaristic, fear-mongering, fact-twisting, fellow evangelical (Who has already written a book, meaning that he's eyeing the White House himself. Count on it. He's as vicious and self-righteous as Ted Cruz, and even deeper into a world of his own.). She never performed the tasks of press secretary with the aplomb of a media-relations professional, Williams said. She was a campaign operative, hired as a mouthpiece and not a distributor of information, however biased. "A press secretary who had an abiding respect for First Amendment freedoms likely would have resigned once it became clear that [45] intended to steamroll his way through the Constitution," Williams wrote. "But Sanders stayed....The [45] Administration's relationship with the press transcends ordinary discord. The president's toxic relationship with the media demands that a press secretary behave, at least publicly, less as a source of information than as a battering ram--especially during a moment of crisis, like now."

Sanders became a hired gun, but her hands were tied in case she was ever tempted to wander off the reservation. 45 often watches what press conferences ever take place on live TV next to the Oval Office. "It's like having the theatre critic-in-chief sitting there, and you'd better believe he'll tell you about it afterward," Williams was told by a White House reporter.

But that was never the problem. Sanders, at least publicly, treated reporters with disdain, obfuscation, and condescension. (In private discussions, she has been far more accommodating and far closer to the traditional role of press secretary. At parties, she has been known to pop a bourbon or two, drinkin' and yes, cussin' like the boys. Wherever she has gone, her public attitude toward her position has taken the shape of her boss'. She may be submissive on the surface, echoing whatever lies he tells, but she also utilizes her opportunities to get where she needs to go.) Ever the victim--one of her boss' major character traits--she regularly insulted the press corps by constantly implying what a pain it was to have to deal with them.

So, quite naturally, the frequency of press conferences has diminished such that, as we count, nothing has taken place over the last 95 days that would approximate one, if you don't include the very meeting at which Sanders announced her resignation. Sanders and her boss are perfectly satisfied with commenting while making their ways to the next meeting--briefly, vaguely, and dismissively with talking points, not genuine information.

One could say, without much exaggeration, that Sanders' job has therefore become obsolete. I seriously wonder if, as 45 has made it part of his M.O., that she either might not be replaced, or that the person who replaces her will be made acting press secretary--you know, on an interim, probationary basis, just in case she/he should mess up even once.

Whether Sanders messed up in saying that "countless" FBI employees had contacted her to support the dismissal of Director James Comey--a lie exposed in the Mueller report, which she could not walk back with anything like skill--is a good question. But no doubt whatever street cred she'd had has pretty much disappeared. It's become a good time to get, and so she's gone.

I'm guessing that her successor will first, be a female, extremely obedient to the strong-sounding (but not actually strong) male; second, an openly-admitted evangelical, like Sanders and many who are now close to 45 (including, chillingly, the Secretary of State) and used to playing a subservient, biblically-based role; and third, someone with a tongue as sharp as Sanders and Kellyanne Conway in dealing with a press corps that has become even more strident in its objections to the attitude extended toward it. In short, the Handmaid in Charge, protecting Big Daddy against those mean old people who judge folks like them so harshly.

For those in Arkansas, you know what you're getting. Rex Nelson, a columnist for the very pro-45 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (which annoyingly tries literally every day to get a pro-45 headline and/or picture into its main story even when it isn't very important; a down-home spin machine that 45 should thank) and Mike Huckabee's former communications director, who is quoted more than once in Williams' story, wants Sanders to run for governor 'some day', not wanting to step on the toes of Asa Hutchinson, the current Republican governor. Nelson's positioning in that daily, monotonous Republican mouthpiece (the circulation of which has no equal in the state, but which is phasing out its print edition), along with family familiarity, will bring that decision forward in a relative hurry.

Meanwhile, the meaning of the First Amendment continues to be trashed by an administration gifted by a built-in "enemy of the people," a self-victimizing smear that it brings forward when it re-occurs to 45, usually at rallies of mindless, indoctrinated minions who boo and hiss the media that gives ironic, public exposure to this insistent nonsense. We face four more years of this attempt at mind-cleansing if 45 should be re-elected, not to mention the acceleration of lies and steady diet of exaggerations that the next campaign no doubt will bring. All the more reason for the press to remain vigilant, aggressive, and mindful of its role as the counterpoint to a government that hides in plain sight.

With the exception, of course, of Fox News. But that's another story for another time.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark