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Jessica Valenti
Sarah Sanders Doesn’t Deserve Reporters’ ‘Civility’
Hobnobbing with the departing press secretary makes light of the callous acts of the administration she served
This week, as refugee children slept on concrete floors, reporters charged with covering the Trump administration were having drinks with Sarah Sanders at a steakhouse. You see, some of the White House press corps held a going-away party (though they declined to call it that) for the outgoing press secretary — a woman who has defended Donald Trump when he called reporters the “enemy of the people.”
Why, given Sanders’ barely-disguised disdain for the press and truth, would any reporter share space — let alone drinks — with this woman?
Well, as one reporter told the Columbia Journalism Review, “Everybody has their issue with Sarah Sanders, but if you can’t have a drink with somebody, then all of civilization has broken down.”
Huh. Here I thought civilization had broken down when we tolerated the opening of baby jails on the border, or when the president of the United States suggested that a woman was too ugly for him to rape. (Again.) But no, it turns out that civilization hinges on our ability to be polite to a woman who called the women who have accused the president of sexual misconduct liars.
The American obsession with civility — especially now, in the face of racist and sexist extremism — has got to stop. There is no upside to being polite to bigots and their enablers; it doesn’t change their behavior, ingratiate us to their victims, or give us any moral high ground. In fact, it does just the opposite: pretending that political justice is a 9-to-5 gig, and that we can all grab a drink after work and shoot the shit, makes us complicit in the Trump administration’s wrongdoings.
Where is the civility for those kids sleeping on the floor? Where is the “politeness” for the trans soldiers that Trump is banning from service?
Progress in America has never been polite.
Concern over playing nice also allows those on the right to change the conversation from the harm they’re inflicting on Americans to their…
