‘Stars’ contestants shouldn’t have to dance around political issues
There’s something bizarre — or tragic? or just 2019-ish? — about the fact that Sean Spicer’s recently announced casting on “Dancing With the Stars” is viewed as an attempt at character rehabilitation.
By normal standards, a former White House press secretary wriggling through the rumba in a shirt unbuttoned to his spray-tanned navel would be considered a rock bottom, not a launchpad. “Can you imagine if Robert Gibbs or Dana Perino appeared on ‘Fear Factor’?” a smart friend asked. “It would have been ‘Lo, how the mighty have fallen!’”
It would have been, as it should have been. But these are different times, and this is a different press secretary, and in any case, I think Spicer’s detractors would have enjoyed seeing him eat bugs for Joe Rogan more than seeing him slog through a triumphant dance-studio training montage.
So instead here we are, this place where a man who told falsehoods to the American people — about crowd size, about Trump Tower meetings — will try to cha-cha his way into our hearts. And where his fellow celebrity dancers are put in the position of awkwardly defending him.
“(He’s a) good guy, really sweet guy,” Karamo Brown, a star of Netflix’s “Queer Eye,” told Access Hollywood. “People would look at us and think that we’re polar opposites, but I’m a big believer that if you can talk to someone and meet in the middle, you can learn about each other and help each other both grow.”
There might be something laudable about that impulse if that’s what the show was truly about — if it was an emotional therapy exercise, wherein contestants found common ground through creative expression.
But “Dancing With the Stars” doesn’t feature contestants talking through politics; it features dancing. The show won’t be Spicer reckoning with his role in this noxious era; the show will be Spicer persevering through routines set to upbeat music, making self-deprecating jokes along the way. Critics who object to his casting are doing so because they’re troubled by these kinds of optics. After a few episodes of Spicer holding ice packs to his knees, “Dancing With the Stars” could have the effect of dry-cleaning his image: He becomes the amiable oaf who hung in there through his fox trot, not the propaganda wing of a contentious administration.
Tom Bergeron, the show’s longtime host, revealed Wednesday that he had concerns about Spicer’s casting. Without revealing his personal politics, he said he thought the show should have been a “joyful respite from our exhausting political climate.”
To that, Spicer himself replied. “Bringing a diverse group of people together, who can interact in a fun, civil and respectful way, is actually a way we can move the country forward,” he told Us Weekly in a statement. “It will make this show an example of how Americans can disagree about politics and tune into good entertainment shows and keep their politics at bay.”
Spicer and Karamo Brown were on the same page, it seemed. Meet in the middle. Be civil and respectful. Agree to disagree.
Agreeing to disagree is useful when the topic is rating the new Popeyes chicken sandwich. It’s not useful when one person wants equality, and the other wants to deny it. It’s not useful when one is saying, “Can I please be a human?” and the other is saying, “No, but how about this, we can both agree that we love the Viennese waltz!”
That’s what we’re really talking about when we talk about Sean Spicer in dance shoes. In some cases, there can’t be a “joyful respite” from our political climate, because these aren’t just topics we discuss and then drop. These are the bodies we live in.
Spicer wants to go on “Dancing With the Stars”? Fine. The show is a democracy. If people don’t like him, he’ll be voted off.
I hope the show itself grapples openly with what it means to have him there. What are they hoping to accomplish, or helping him accomplish? Is Spicer hoping to account for his former actions? Excuse them? Praying we’ll all just forget about them once he dons a top hat?