Clearly out of their depth
I almost felt sorry for Sean Spicer earlier this week as he stumbled through his now-infamous reference to Hitler. His attempt to clarify it moments later only made matters worse.
Both the female reporter who suggested he might want to clarify his comments, and the one behind her had troubled, and to my eyes, empathetic expressions on their faces. The younger of the two seemed near tears as Spicer selfdestructed.
She looked like she felt helpless, watching a drowning man sinking beneath the waves. Either that or she was far more in touch factually and emotionally with the terrible reality of what he was talking about than he was, and the implicit tragedy of that moment in the White House of all places was close to unbearable. Or both.
Afterwards, I was reminded of someone else I once almost felt sorry for when he too made an exceedingly inappropriate reference to Hitler.
That was our own Bruce-GreyOwen Sound MP Larry Miller who rose February 7, 2012 from his seat on the former Conservative governement backbenchs to speak against the now-defunct long gun registry. He is still a backbench MP, though now on the opposition side of the House of Commons.
The howls of shock and derision that emanated from the opposition benches that day more than five years ago included the voice of Justin Trudeau, then a member of the third-party status Liberals, and now Canada’s Prime Minister.
Reports at the time had Trudeau calling out, “the first person who mentions the H-word loses the argument.”
It was, and it remains, virtually political dogma that when seeking to use the H-word to back up one’s opinion, or point of view, it’s best not to use the H-word, or certainly be very, very careful about its use.
Otherwise, one runs the risk of diminishing the degree of utter evil it represents, and thus the pain and suffering of millions of systematically murdered victims who were deemed racially, genetically, or otherwise a threat to the cultural purity of the “master race.”
Jews especially were at the top of Hitler’s hate list, with six
million murdered with increasing ferocity right up to the end of the Second World War.
As well, anyone foolish enough to make inappropriate use of the H-word for political purposes runs the risk of leaving themselves open to wide public ridicule, especially in the age of social media and the “global village” Marshal McLuhan so accurately predicted.
I say I “almost” felt sorry for both Miller and Spicer. But ultimately they both chose jobs that arguably required a finer grasp of what was appropriate in the place and moment.
A wise man I knew years ago once said a sense of his own limitations is one of the hardest things for a man to accept and put into daily practice to help guide his actions.
Spicer appeared to be speaking off-the-cuff, but considering where he was and for whom he was speaking – and also considering it wasn’t his first akward moment – that was no excuse. He exposed himself, finally, as being utterly out of his depth in the job as spokesperson to the news media for the president of the United States.
But – and this may be part of his problem – so is the man he works for out of his depth in that position, especially as the commander-in-chief who suddenly seems to be taking a childish delight in the beauty of the weapons at his command.
Take for example, part of the interview President Donald Trump had with a Fox Business reporter this past Thursday. He and the president of China, Xi Jinping, were having dessert last weekend after a lunch and Trump had just approved the order for cruise missiles to be launched against a Syrian government air base. It was in retaliation for Syria’s alleged saringas attack on a Rebel-held Syrian town that killed 80 civilians, many of whom were children.
The Washington Post published a full transcript of the interview that same day, including this eyepopping excerpt near the end:
“TRUMP: . . . I was sitting at the table. We had finished dinner. We’re now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen and President Xi was enjoying it. And I was given the message from the generals that the ships are locked and loaded, what do you do?
And we made a determination to do it, so the missiles were on the way.
And I said, Mr. president, let me explain something to you. This was during dessert. We’ve just fired 59 missiles, all of which hit, by the way, unbelievable, from, you know, hundreds of miles away, all of which hit, amazing . . .
TRUMP: It’s so incredible. It’s brilliant. It’s genius. Our technology, our equipment, is better than anybody by a factor of five. I mean look, we have, in terms of technology, nobody can even come close to competing.”
President Trump went on to say President Jinping was silent for about 10 seconds, which worried him a bit. But then the president of the most populous country on the planet said the gas attack had been a brutal act, so “it was okay,” Trump told the Fox reporter.
Now if that isn’t stomach-churning food for thought, about a manchild way out of his depth with the fate of the world at his finger-tips, I don’t know what is.