{"id":91810,"date":"2017-09-19T12:47:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T12:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/media-mob-savages-sean-spicer-for-an-emmy-joke-he-saw-as-harmless-fun.html"},"modified":"2017-09-19T12:47:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-19T12:47:00","slug":"media-mob-savages-sean-spicer-for-an-emmy-joke-he-saw-as-harmless-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/media-mob-savages-sean-spicer-for-an-emmy-joke-he-saw-as-harmless-fun.html","title":{"rendered":"Media mob savages Sean Spicer for an Emmy Joke he saw as harmless fun"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t
\n\t \"Former<\/a><\/p>\n

Sean Spicer on life after the White House<\/a><\/h4>\n

Former White House press secretary opens up on his new projects, what it was like in the Trump administration and more<\/p>\n

There\u2019s little shock in how the Emmys turned into another Trump-bashing festival. Yawn.<\/p>\n

What is surprising is how media and political insiders are absolutely pummeling Sean Spicer for a joking bit that lasted less than a minute.<\/p>\n

In case you missed it, Spicer wheeled out a White House podium and declared that \u201cthis will be the largest audience to witness an Emmys, period. Both in person and around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Journalists and other critics immediately tarred and feathered Spicer for being willing to laugh at himself. He was being \u201cnormalized,\u201d they cried, and this would not do. A Twitter mob savaged him.<\/p>\n

Spicer was mocking his first full day in office, when he scolded the press after the president sent him out to dispute stories that his inaugural crowd was smaller than Barack Obama\u2019s in 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very simple thing,\u201d Spicer told me last night after returning from Los Angeles. \u201cIt was a funny skit, it poked fun at me, and that\u2019s it. There\u2019s no deeper, esoteric meaning like I\u2019ve heard from the pundits.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former spokesman said he was not conceding some moral failing in telling the New York Times that he had regrets about disputing the size of Trump\u2019s inaugural crowd to reporters on Jan. 21. \u201cI look at every event, good or bad, and say what could I have done better? I should have prepared more. There are certain facts I should have double-checked.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for the post-Emmy attacks, Spicer told me: \u201cThere are a lot of people, no matter what you do or say, who are going to be haters. That\u2019s their right. It\u2019s a free country.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened on that day was hardly Spicer\u2019s finest hour. And he was overly harsh in ripping the press.<\/p>\n

But for that and the rest of his tenure, many pundits want him to wear a scarlet letter forever and not show his face in public.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t Make This Guy a Folk Hero,\u201d said the Daily Beast. Slate\u2019s Jamelle Bouie tweeted, \u201cThe degree to which Sean Spicer has faced no consequences is a glimpse into the post-Trump future.\u201d CNN\u2019s Chris Cillizza said Spicer had been \u201cwillfully subverting the facts\u201d and the Emmys cameo was \u201ca validation that purposely misleading on the taxpayer’s dime is a-OK.\u201d Actor Zach Braff declared him \u201cevil.\u201d<\/p>\n

A journalism professor named Seth Abramson wrote: \u201cWhen U.S. history records the crimes of this administration\u2014and the names of its enablers\u2014Sean Spicer on the Emmys will be a VERY bad look.\u201d<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s the thing: It\u2019s fine to criticize Spicer\u2019s tenure as Trump\u2019s spokesman. He obviously made some mistakes. He also attracted a sizable daytime audience by driving the president\u2019s message.<\/p>\n

The notion that he was a paid liar who should be shunned by polite society reflects a stunning double standard. Virtually every White House press secretary in recent decades has at times misled the press, in some cases through untruths and in others through omission, at the behest of the boss.<\/p>\n

To single out Spicer suggests to me a fury at Trump that clouds good judgment, and an attempt at payback by some journalists he tangled with or alienated.<\/p>\n

Spicer told a joke about crowd size, not war and peace, on an awards show. Have his detractors lost any semblance of a sense of humor?<\/p>\n

Virtually every Hollywood awards show now routinely beats up on the president because that\u2019s deemed the cool thing to do. If Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin want to call the president \u201ca sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot,\u201d I\u2019m sure it pleased their liberal friends.<\/p>\n

And there was no doubt that Stephen Colbert would go there, since slamming Trump helped him take the \u201cLate Show\u201d from last to first place and that\u2019s become his calling card. The Emmy folks knew what they were getting. It was Colbert who thought up the Spicer bit.<\/p>\n

Many of Barack Obama\u2019s top aides quickly became media commentators. Are the denizens of the media and social media world now arguing that any ex-Trump aide must be banished from the public square?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feeds.foxnews.com\/~r\/foxnews\/politics\/~3\/Muh9zbJjAsU\/media-mob-savages-sean-spicer-for-emmy-joke-saw-as-harmless-fun.html<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sean Spicer on life after the White House Former White House press secretary opens up on his new projects, what it was like in the Trump administration and more There\u2019s little shock in how the Emmys turned into another Trump-bashing festival. Yawn. What is surprising is how media and political insiders are absolutely pummeling Sean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-91810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}