Why Rich White People in America Get a Lot of Chances

Jennifer Wright
Photo credit: Erin Lux
Photo credit: Erin Lux

From Harper's BAZAAR

Members of the Trump administration are going to waltz away from this terrible period completely unscathed.

In some cases, quite literally. Trump’s former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer is going to go on the reality program Dancing With the Stars. The executive producer for the show has claimed, "It’s really fun for us to have people from all different walks of life, representing all different parts of this great country."

Well, not perhaps the brown people at the border. They are in concentration camps where they have to drink from toilets. They are kept there by an administration Sean Spicer repeatedly lied about in order to positively advance its image. Remember Spicer using using “alternative facts” to talk about how large Trump's inaugural crowd was, or lying about terrorist attacks? That was, of course, before the time he temporarily banned the New York Times, CNN, and Politico from the daily White House press briefing.

Then there’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders, another former Press Secretary, who insisted that Trump never promoted or encouraged violence, despite the fact that he did, repeatedly. She has just signed a book deal with St. Martins, which means, as Maris Kreizman noted, “the imprint that proudly publishes Trump's rape victim [E. Jean Carroll] is now proudly publishing Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his proud defender.”

Remember when Huckabee Sanders claimed that the dozens of women who accused Trump of sexual assault were lying, or that she didn’t know about Trump’s hush-money payoffs despite the fact that Trump admitted to them.

Remember these people’s misdeeds because their misdeeds will be forgotten very soon. Americans do not have long memories. Rich white people in America get a lot of chances. And celebrities in America get infinite chances. So, these grubby people, these people who lied, who advanced an evil cause, will go on waltzing and partying and giggling about their past wrongs.

Huckabee Sanders and Spicer will not be the only ones. There will be many who will be similarly rewarded for no reason but having the lack of backbone required to work for one of the most corrupt Presidents in American history. I am sure they will have justifications, which in the years to come they will lay forth in books and essays in prominent publications. Perhaps they wanted the money. Perhaps they were duped. Yes, I’m sure they’ll have justifications. I am also sure that not a single one of those justifications will compare to those of parents who said they had to flee their countries and cross the border because otherwise they would die. While members of the Trump administration felt comfortable denying those people soap.

I would never think that shameful historical footnotes like Spicer and Huckabee Sanders should be treated so inhumanely. I wouldn’t think that of anyone. But nor do I think they should be applauded at book parties and dance competitions.

I think they should be treated with scorn and condemnation for the rest of their days. I do not think their wrongs should be forgotten. I do not think they should be treated as if they did anything that required a single virtue. They’re not talented. They’re not clever. They were comfortable lying on behalf of a bad man because they thought they’d benefit by doing so, and that’s about it. That’s an ability shared by every toddler who has ever denied doing something because they didn’t want to get in trouble, so I’m pretty sure it isn’t praiseworthy.

If you buy their books and watch their shows, if you let them become funny memes or people who get to speak at fundraisers, you then agree that what they participated in didn’t really matter. The talent bookers who book them, the publishers who think they can make profit off of them are in agreement that the deaths of immigrant children at the border, the parents who screamed as their infants were taken from them, they were not so important, really.

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