Will Sean Spicer remember his alma mater?
T here’s a funny video you can watch on YouTube, made by Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show on NBC, that splices together clips of departing White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s briefings, to make him appear to be singing Gloria Gaynor’s 1978 disco dance anthem “I will Survive.”
In introducing the clip, Fallon makes some humorous suggestions for Spicer in his life after the White House.
Indeed, if you consider his time here at Connecticut College, Spicer seems to have honed survival instincts, a dust-yourself-off-and-getback-in-the-game approach.
After all, at Connecticut College he ran for class president every year, lost, and ran again.
His college roommate said in recent interviews that Spicer tried very hard to be liked and was well known around campus.
When the campus newspaper, The College Voice, published a campus nickname for him, he wrote an angry letter to the editor saying “Sean Sphincter” was clearly not an unintentional typo.
Spicer told The Washington Post not long ago that he molded his conservative political viewpoint at Connecticut College, in part in reaction to the liberal atmosphere he found there.
Indeed, today’s campus community burnished its liberal credentials after Spicer’s appointment as President Donald Trump’s new press secretary, questioning his truthfulness in a letter signed by more than 1,200 students and alumni.
“Thus far, we question your ability to be consistently truthful and we feel that your conduct does not reflect the values we are being taught at Connecticut College,” the letter said, reminding him of the honor code he pledged at the school.
It’s clear Spicer didn’t pay much attention to the letter, given headlines like this one, from The New Yorker, that followed his resignation: “Sean Spicer will be remembered for his lies.”
Actually, it will probably be for the defense of President Trump’s lies, which are so frequent that both The Washington Post and New York Times are now documenting them in logs, adding new ones daily.
Still, this being America, the press secretary from the first reality TV presidency almost certainly will cash in on his new celebrity status in his life after the White House.
He reportedly already has had some introductory conversations with a book agent and television producers. He didn’t dismiss, when asked, that he might be considering an invite to appear on “Dancing with The Stars.”
The college administration took some heat on campus for a friendly feature it published about Spicer, after his appointment by Trump. Some thought he wasn’t deserving of the usual fawning for alumni in college publications.
But now that Spicer seems poised to cash in on his time in the Trump Administration spotlight, the college should, more than ever, keep giving him the full-court alumni press.
Maybe he will end up on President Katherine Bergeron’s must-call list for potential donors.
Could there be a Sean Spicer Hall in the college’s future?
It will be hard to forget Melissa McCarthy’s impersonation of Spicer on “Saturday Night Live,” pushing that lectern out into the pack of startled reporters in the press briefing room.
Still, I suspect Spicer will craft an Act II in which he won’t be tainted so much by all those Trump lies.
I just hope that the Connecticut Republicans who endorsed and supported Trump will find it harder to disassociate themselves from the administration, as approval ratings hit the floor and the vice of almost-certain prosecutions begins to take grip.