"spicer at the emmys"

CBS

Halloween came a little too early this year for liberals and disaffected Trump fans alike, as 2017 Emmy Awards emcee, Mr. Stephen Colbert doled Trump's former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer out like a cloying, saccharine cake to horrified audiences in what seemed like a well-intentioned (though highly controversial) olive branch to the other side. Ribbing his own tortuous first day on the job as Trump's chief media propagandist, "Spicey," as he's come to be known on SNL, mimicked his own awkward Stalin-esque doublespeak with a pang of twinge-inducing discomfort, which normally would've been met with jeers for it not for the evening's self-aggrandizing affair. Colbert, who was once such a formidable fixture in American politics at the height of the Bush / Obama era, has since been drubbed for his ill-advised decision, especially on social media, where the fervor reached a vociferous tipping point. Did the equal opportunity prankster take things too far, or have we really fallen victim to the same predictable pattern of not being able to take a joke at the expense of our own institutions, values, and general well-being?

With health care hanging by a thread yet again, inviting Sean Spicer back to the national stage for a feel-good rehabilitation didn't go over so well with the many swaths of angry viewers and audience members who vented their frustration out on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; calling out the moment for what it was — a shock and awe invasion of our coddled, liberal "safe space." Republicans and Conservatives love applying this denomination whenever they see fit to rip open the fake moral equivalencies propagated by the left, who, in their view, are hypocritical champions of free speech, criticizing individuals who do not share their beliefs with unflappable intransigence. It's as if right-wing zealots such as Ann Coulter, Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos and Ben Shapiro operate under the shared assumption that if they, the true harbingers of the first amendment, are able to book a speaking slot at a left-leaning university, protests and riots would automatically ensue, generating even more publicity for themselves and ensuring us liberal "snowflakes" would in turn continue to shoot ourselves in the foot. If the purported "deep nanny state" can produce and promote a televised event which rebukes and mocks the President at every conceivable turn, then in many respects, it should also be able to stomach a man, who in seeking some misplaced sense of redemption, made those very same laughs so utterly and painfully real to begin with. 

Of course, the foul stench of Trump's victory clung over the perfectly coiffed crowd like meat hooks on a slowly descending chandelier, and Spicer was in an immensely peculiar position of a man who'd tasted the Kool-Aid and decided it wasn't for him, only after witnessing dozens of others before him falling at his feet, knowing their bad fortunes were imminent and unavoidable. Let us not forget Spicer's most egregious untruth, or "fabrication," came when he purposefully misled the U.S. about 3-5 million voters casting illegal ballots in California, without a scant of evidence to back up his claim. We saw many wonderful actors this year, along with writers, producers and directors of color like Riz Ahmed, Lena Waithe, Donald Glover and Sterling K. Brown win big in their respective categories, not only as men and women hailing from diverse backgrounds, but also as members of the LGBTQIA community — their critical victories serving as solemn reminders that the resistance is indeed working, though it is still a long road ahead to reverse the damage done by men like Trump and Spicer. Colbert may not have intended to crash the party, but in fairness, why should he have? He's enjoyed great ratings, remains a stellar white male 1%-er, and will never really know why "safe spaces" were ever necessary in the first place. I hope that the Spicer backlash proves we're not yet ready to embrace the villains of last year's election, but remain optimistic about the backlash to the backlash, by reaffirming that we're also ready to thicken our collective skin, and in doing so, ready to move forward — stronger than ever — in this time of predictably unpredictable unease.