Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

             Should this be deemed a bridge too far in current political discourse–don’t even get started with me.

          Fallout from the Trump presidency has dumped a ton of filth on our national conversation and I will not allow high ground to be claimed by political thugs whilst they shame others for naming names.

           I’ve not been happy with many press secretaries but their infractions have been at worst bad judgment in the heat of the trench warfare in which they toil, a pressure-cooker not to be wished on anyone loved or held dear.

          Often they bolt from the blue of happenstance encounters with a political comer, then morph into his face and voice, as did Jody Powell, a southerner from near Jimmy Carter’s peanut farm in Georgia—and whom I did not so much dislike as felt that Carter could have done so much better. At times a shrewd party hack gets the job and becomes further proof of the Peter Principle when elevated to facing the nation’s press; or like Marlin Fitzwater, who served both Reagan and the elder Bush but later was suckered into a disastrous interview with Ali G that hurt his brand and cost his chance for the Congressional Gold Medal. Dana Perino served George W—she of the missing sparkplugs and lackluster demeanor, though at times such actually serves one well in politics.

          Robert Gibbs, an Obama choice, merrily took on Barack’s critics, calling them the “professional left” and suggesting they all be drug tested. What made each different from the current podium-holder was that on the whole they respected the press corps, regardless of the battles and scars, dutifully taking their lumps while answering virtually all questions.

          Not Sarah Sanders, proud product of Oauchita Baptist Coll—er, now “University” in Arkadelphia, near the Ozark Mountainss. The website advises us it’s to be pronounced, “Wash-Uh-Taw,” though I needed no prompting, given my familiarity with a pack of them who once descended on a grad school in Kansas City.

          This Sarah, not be confused with Palin, may not see Russia from her house but she’d have us think she knows-it-all, and why not, as daughter of Mike Huckabee, Baptist preacher and liar-in-chief of the southern wing of the GOP, thereby giving both God and religion a bad name in those parts. You’d think Sarah had a Ph.D from God himself as she snubs a press corps that is galaxies beyond her intelligence, a fact lost on her as she dismisses questions, promises to “get back to” or to “keep posted” the press corps when she has no intention of doing so. She pouted at being denied restaurant service shortly after praising a bakery’s refusal to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. The days of Sean Spicer are made to seem halcyon by comparison—though just as I said those words aloud, my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth.

          Sarah is the embodiment of the old Ozarkian joke about a woman much like her in age and appearance, clad in a flower-sack dress and puffing up a dusty lane pursued by a 13-year old hickseed who, when called out by a passerby to leave the woman alone, yells back, “But her’s my ma—her’s weanin’ me.”

          In the interest of full disclosure, I’m native to the Ozarks, on the Missouri side of the line. To some, the trick is somehow to escape that culture by dint of education—or just get the hell out to save one’s soul: I’ve lived and worked all over the U.S. and with hindsight sadly reflect that too many Ozarkians and Ouachitans have addictions to their own ignorance. God bless those who remain and manage to keep their sanity.

          In sum, that is Sarah Sanders—silly, sad and sorrowfully over her head; dumb as a post, arrogant in her benightedness, and a perfect fit for the man who said he’d hire the brightest and best, then hi-jacked every knucklehead heretofore unknown and unheard of to be the face of government in these United States.

          Look not for Sarah’s visage on a future postage stamp or any biography to grace the Best Seller list. Any references to her current tenure will say much more than I have here, and in darker, bolder terms, and at best found in the Humor section of out-of-the-way bookstores.

          On the other hand, it may be that an authorized autobiography will come to anchor a bookshelf of that renowned bastion of high culture in Arkadelphia, in the section labelled Sacred History.