After 183 days, 58 news conferences, one perfect Saturday Night Live skewering, and countless packs of stress gum, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, has resigned. But first, he slammed the door in an ABC News reporter’s face.
Reports indicate that Spicer quit because United States President Donald Trump had appointed Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director.
Spicer’s relationship to the press got off to a bad start. Just one day after Trump’s inauguration, our boy Sean issued a bizarre statement, claiming the crowd was the biggest ever. His sagging suit indicated that perhaps he was not the greatest at gauging the sizes of things. But when questioned, he doubled down, despite the fact that his claim about crowd size could be easily disproved by looking at photographs.
Spicer opened his second White House presser with a mea culpa, sort of, joking woodenly about his first appearance. He was met with stony silence.
From there, things got worse. I’ll never forget arriving at a hotel in Kathmandu after a solid day of travelling, turning on the television, and catching the tail end of Anderson Cooper explaining how Sean Spicer was clarifying his “Hitler comments”. I thought I was hallucinating, but it was true: While I was in the air, blissfully free of all things Trump, Spicer was telling the press corps that Hitler did not use chemical weapons, then doubling down, and then apologising for all that Hitler talk. Spicer was alternately rude and outright dismissive to reporters. He told April Ryan to stop shaking her head. He made Jim Acosta of CNN and Hallie Jackson of MSNBC into household names. Still, Americans tuned into Spicer’s pressers in such numbers that their ratings topped the soap operas that shared the time slot. Call it “As the World Burns”.
Spicer was the guy tasked with streamlining the White House’s message, which could not have been easy in an administration that doesn’t leak so much as spray in all directions like a broken fire hydrant. But he tried.
Spicer’s detractors might say anything, but we shouldn’t welcome his exit. We shouldn’t be happy about this. Spicer was truly the perfect mouthpiece for the Trump White House, and, he will be missed.
Unlike others in the Trump administration, Spicer would occasionally flirt with being a sympathetic figure. When reports indicated that Trump had blocked his press secretary — a devout Catholic — from meeting Pope Francis, you almost had to feel sorry for the guy. Spicer had some depth to him.
His tired eyes would telegraph distress signals to the television cameras: Help me. I’m sad. Please stop picking on me; this is actually hurtful. I thought the suit looked good.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has all the sparkle and charm of the airline call centre employee, who tells you there’s no way you can get on a flight to Chicago until at least Wednesday, is the next face. Or is it Stephen Miller, oily comic book villain? Steve Bannon? Kellyanne Conway, exhausted and exhausting?
None of these White House D-listers could replace Spicer in the hearts of a public that’s grown to expect him, to loathe him, to pity him. None of them could possibly convey the chutzpah that Spicer embodied. And for that, he’ll be missed.
Goodnight, sweet wince.
— New York Times News Service
Erin Gloria Ryan (@morninggloria) is a senior editor at the Daily Beast and the host of Cafe.com’s Girl Friday podcast.
