Unflinching scold Sanders is just what Trump ordered

When White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders asked the press corps Monday to preface their daily briefing questions with a statement of thankfulness, reporters obliged.

Or, should we say, obeyed.

For this, no doubt, Sanders was grateful.

Yet again, she controlled the crowd, though this time by candy-coating her usual condescension with faux fellowship.

I’m thankful I wasn’t in the room.

My first impulse when someone asks me to share is to not-share. This isn’t because I’m not a sharing person, but because sharing, like charity, should be voluntary. For a press sec- retary to require professional journalists to essentially beg for their supper, surrendering their adversarial posture like a dog commanded to Drop The Bone, is an infantilizing tactic. The effect is to neutralize the opposition.

Yes, I said opposition. The press, by definition, is oppositional. As Mr. Dooley, the turn-ofthe-century fictional bartender created by columnist Finley Peter Dunne is often paraphrased: “The newspaper’s job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

Yet, from the interplay between the media and the Trump administration, one would think reporters were supposed to be taking dictation. Seen and not heard. Sanders routinely brushes reporters’ questions aside. During any given press briefing, one is likely to hear words to these effects:

“I think he addressed that pretty thoroughly yesterday,” she’ll say. Or, “We don’t have any announcement on that.” Or my personal favorite, which came in response to a query about chief of staff and retired Gen. John Kelly’s remarks about Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, “If you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that’s something highly inappropriate.”

If Sanders isn’t evading, she’s scolding. Like a parent weary of her 3-yearold’s constant “why?,” her tone and expression telegraph: “Because I say so.”

Sanders’ sudden shift from press secretary to minister’s daughter a few days before Thanksgiving coincides with her apparent image evolution of being more-carefully coiffed, coutured and contoured with appropriately professional makeup.

If one were Sanders’ employer, meanwhile, one surely would be pleased. She’s everything a terrible person — or, say, an unpopular president — could hope for in a public relations artist. She says nothing; gives away nothing; looks fierce and dutifully repeats falsehoods as required. Her resistance to flinching or blinking is state of the art.

Yet, even as Sanders declines to enlighten the press corps, she manages to inspire admiration for her toughness and effectiveness — from a certain perspective. To Donald Trump’s base, she’s the a

la mode on a slice of apple pie. Her daily humiliation of the press, making them seem like churlish children, is a booster shot of “fake news” animus that also inoculates against viral truths.

To the media, she is the wall Trump promised to erect and, it seems, we are the swamp he seeks to drain. Out with the media, out with free speech, out with facts! For these purposes, Sanders is perfectly cast. Where there is the prolonged car alarm of “fake news,” there is bound to be a fake news officer. Such is not always the case. In fact, the most successful press secretaries were journalists first.