Shame Isn't Dead: Sarah Sanders Edition

From Esquire

In a remarkably shameless weekend spectacle, the staff and supporters of Donald J. Trump, American president-as well as some of their most effete enablers in the so-called Liberal Media-waged a whine campaign over prominent Trumpists not being treated with civility. Considering the Leader of this Movement brands all his political opponents with demeaning nicknames, brags about grabbing women "by the pussy," and reportedly calls various countries with primarily black or brown populations "shitholes," this doesn't pass the laugh test. There is nothing civil about Donald Trump.

Yet the president himself also weighed in on the incident du jour, in which a restaurant called the Red Hen outside Washington, D.C. denied service to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary and one of the president's most unscrupulous defenders. Trump, naturally, popped up with a turbo shot of CIVILITY to rescue the discourse and drag it back to respectability:

The only thing more predictable than the current President of the United States using his platform to call out an individual small business-which is now the target of Pizzagate-style conspiracy theorists-was his lying. The restaurant reportedly hasn't had a serious health code violation since 2014. It was also very well regarded on Yelp before the president's media minions directed their followers to wage war on the restaurant's reputation. (That's probably why Sanders chose to eat there. Trump's scattergun tweet is an unwitting suggestion that his press secretary chooses to eat at "filthy" restaurants.)

The smear campaign began when Sanders herself called out the restaurant publicly:

The idea Sanders treats people with whom she disagrees with dignity and respect is laughable. (Also, the restaurant owner was exceedingly polite in dealing with someone with whom she so fundamentally disagrees.) But the larger issue here is that we, as a people, seem to have forgotten that shame is a very necessary force in our society. In January, I asked whether we are watching the Death of Shame or merely the rise of shameless behavior. A key takeaway from that discussion was an examination of shame's role in enforcing social norms that don't quite rise to the level of legal violations:

We also examined why shame is failing in the current era:

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is being publicly shamed for aiding and abetting an administration that is currently trying to roll back insurance protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, waging an assault on the rule of law and due process, and, most recently, tearing little children from the arms of their parents and sending them thousands of miles away-often where the parents have no idea where they are. These are just a tiny fraction of what this administration has done that, in normal circumstances, would be a permanent mark of shame for all involved.

The Red Hen's owner made the choice as an individual and business owner to deny service to Sanders based on her actions on behalf of this administration. It was an immediate statement of belief that Sanders' actions should not be acceptable in our society, and that she should pay a price in her daily life for continuing to behave this way. It was a symbol to others that nobody deserves a free pass when they do the bidding of a would-be authoritarian who derails the lives of the most vulnerable for a political Win.

Political leaders-or, for that matter, restaurant owners-can never advocate the threat of violence or intimidation as a solution to political disputes. (Maxine Waters' comments this weekend were vague enough to present a problem in that regard.) But that is not what happened at the Red Hen. Sanders paid a social price, enforced peacefully and even politely, for her abhorrent behavior. She was shamed, and she did not like it. Part of her response is probably rooted in abject shock, since her boss has so consistently and competently dodged social repercussions for his actions by simply ignoring the backlash, or hiding in the friendly information machine of right-wing media.

The signs of shame's decline were once again evident in the response here, as Newt Gingrich-a pioneer of incivility, nastiness, and personal attacks as political strategy-leapt to the defense of Civility In Our Discourse. Based on his record, that is a shameless move: it suggests he thinks there are no social consequences for behaving like a hypocrite, just as Trump believes there are none for lying.

But the Red Hen shows we can still enforce social norms, even for people who try to live their whole lives in a bubble. This goes for Seth Rogen's treatment of Paul Ryan, too. You don't get a picture with your favorite celebs, and you might even get embarrassed in front of your kids, if you cut taxes on the rich while trying to dismantle the social safety net, all the while allowing members of your caucus to openly traffick in white nationalism, and refusing to do your constitutional duty in providing a check on an increasingly authoritarian president.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who has overseen and defended-sometimes with lies-the family separation policy, and Stephen Miller, the ghoulish White House aide who championed it, have both also been run out of restaurants recently. These shamings were carried out by crowds, which can more easily turn ugly, but they didn't cross the line in these cases.

For one thing, it is truly gobsmacking that these two thought they could eat at a couple of Mexican restaurants without incident. (In Miller's case, it may well have been a sneering statement of intent.) It's not just the fare; every restaurant they would have eaten at probably relies on undocumented labor to function-the kind of people Nielsen and Miller and their boss are trying to crush with propaganda and extremist policy.

The key point here is that these officials are experiencing repercussions for their actions. They are paying for things they did. This is fundamentally different from refusing to bake someone a cake because they are gay. It is even more offensive to compare it to segregation, as former Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan did:

They are not being denied service because they are white. They are not even shown the door because they are Trump supporters. They're being shamed because they are working to implement an agenda-making choices and doing things in the world-that have horrible consequences, and which they could stop doing at any time. Being gay is not a choice. Being party to family separations is.

All this is a relatively new development. For most of the time since January 2017, ex-Trump officials have been more likely to get a gig at the Harvard Institute of Politics than be politely asked to leave a restaurant. Sanders' treatment was appropriate for a lieutenant to this president. Protests and direct actions must be peaceful, but they do not need to be civil. The former is a cornerstone of democratic politics. The latter is primarily championed by the comfortable, who would prefer not to be troubled by the grim, visceral realities of challenging a would-be authoritarian regime, or fighting for your healthcare or to keep your family together.

That group of the comfortable includes newspaper editorial boards, like The Washington Post, whose headline on this incident read, "Let the Trump team eat in peace." Certainly they can eat in peace, but those who find their actions unacceptable do not need to provide the venue. Let them eat in a restaurant which has no issue with their using children as hostages and props in their great battle to prevent the browning of America. Or better yet, let them eat at home, where the silence might provide them the space to think on what they've done-and what they might be willing to do in our uncertain future.

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