Judging from the offer, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has fallen on pretty hard times since he was relieved of his government post.
The context of this curious remark, which was made during an appearance on the Fox Business Network on Thursday, explains Spicer’s true, if clumsily worded, intent:
I think the idea that it has become kind of cool to say I won’t even show up to see the president of the United States is a sad commentary on where we are. Look, if President Obama called me right now today and said ‘Hey, come mow my lawn,’ I’d do it because I think that there is something that we all should come together as Americans and want to support our leaders, our elected officials, Republican, Democrat.
The first part of the quote is a reaction to a gratuitous insult to the president delivered by actor Tom Hanks, who said he wouldn’t attend a White House screening of his new film, “The Post.” The interesting thing about Hanks’s dig is that no such screening is planned and no invitation has been tendered.
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In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, he was asked whether he would attend a hypothetical screening. Here’s his complete response:
That’s an interesting question. I don’t think I would. Because I think that at some point — look, I didn’t think things were going to be this way last November. I would not have been able to imagine that we would be living in a country where neo-Nazis are doing torchlight parades in Charlottesville [Va.] and jokes about Pocahontas are being made in front of the Navajo code talkers. And individually we have to decide when we take to the ramparts. You don’t take to the ramparts necessarily right away, but you do have to start weighing things. You may think: “You know what? I think now is the time.” This is the moment where, in some ways, our personal choices are going to have to reflect our opinions. We have to start voting, actually, before the election. So, I would probably vote not to go.
I hate to break it to Hanks, but here in real world, grown-ups deal with the hand they’re played. Plenty of us didn’t think things were going to be the way they were after the 2008 election, which was won by an arrogant, blame-shifting egotist who went on to promote equally noxious parades and notions of another kind. Did Hanks fail to notice when liberals blocked highway traffic in the name of imagined acts of racism? Did he miss the news that whiteness and ” toxic masculinity” have become the chief evils in the U.S.?
Tom Hanks needs to shut up — and grow up.
And Sean Spicer needs to choose his words more carefully
.@seanspicer: “If President Obama called me today and said ‘hey come mow my lawn,’ I’d do it because I think that there’s something that we all should come together as Americans and want to support our leaders, our elected officials, Republican [or] Democrat.” pic.twitter.com/qPxPVnPGXw
— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) December 21, 2017
