Why Is Sean Spicer Even on Dancing with the Stars?

From Oprah Magazine

• Season 28 of ABC's Dancing with the Stars premieres at 8 p.m. ET on September 16.

• Sean Spicer, former White House Press Secretary, was a controversial addition to the DWTS cast, which also includes James Van Der Beek and Sailor Brinkley-Cook.

• Here, senior writer Samantha Vincenty shares her opinion on the show blurring the lines between entertainment and politics.

Dancing With the Stars’ cast announcements are routinely met with a social media chorus of "Ahhs," "Oohs," and “Who?” But the news that season 28 would feature former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was as unexpected as it was divisive. This is a man whose historically short tenure on the job was, until DTWS, on its way to being eclipsed in the public memory by Melissa McCarthy’s SNL impression of Spicer as a semi-coherent hothead on a mobile podium. In retrospect, Spicer’s controversial cameo on the 2017 Emmys was an early clue that he longed to be famous for non-Trump-related reasons. Now, it appears he'd like to cha-cha his way into DTWS viewers’ hearts. But I need to know: why does ABC even want him to?

Spicer is far from the first DTWS contestant with political ties. Former GOP House Majority Leader Tom DeLay competed in season 9, while former Texas governor and current U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry was the second “star” to be eliminated in season 23. And Marla Maples, Trump’s second wife, was on season 22.

Yet Spicer’s name on the roster sparked more debate than any of these previous casting choices. Host Tom Bergeron even voiced his own dissent with a note titled “some thoughts about today,” sharing on social media that he’d told the show’s executive producer that he wants the show to be a “joyful respite from our exhausting political climate and free of inevitably divisive bookings from ANY party affiliations.” Meanwhile, season 28 cast member Karamo Brown of Queer Eye told Access that Spicer was a “good guy, a really sweet guy,” and tweeted that he was “excited to sit down w/ him and engage in a respectful conversations.” His fans’ response to these comments evidently rattled Brown to the point that he deleted his Twitter account completely. He has since distanced himself from Spicer, saying “we only met one day.”

To insist that the DTWS producer’s casting picks are solely about the people and not their politics would run directly counter to what Perry told People weeks before the 2016 presidential election.

“You know, I was probably more helpful to Donald last night being here then sitting in the audience at the debate,” Perry said, “because people got to see a Republican that they may have thought was some stuffed shirt—you know, right-wing, crazy whack job or however they would like to identify us—and over the course of the last month, people got to see a person I think that they came to enjoy being around and liked.”

If one applies this same line of thinking to Spicer’s casting, it does give weight to the concern that his status as a contestant normalizes the uniquely problematic aspects of the administration he once worked for.

These aspects were evident in Spicer’s own absurd actions as an employee. Communicating a president’s message is a job requirement for any White House press secretary, but history might not remember the lies (or as Kellyanne Conway deemed them, "alternative facts") Spicer told on behalf of our nation's highest office particularly well.

If you need a refresher, there were the wild claims regarding Trump’s inauguration crowd size, and Spicer's insistence that the 2017 travel ban was not a travel ban, despite his own boss calling it a “travel ban” repeatedly. Then there was the time he had to apologize for saying that Hitler was bad, sure, but not as bad as the current president of Syria. Even his apparent disdain for the mainstream media was a lie, given that he's since worked as a special correspondent for Extra.

Spicer appears wholly unburdened by whatever his past professional actions may have wrought, and he's eager to move on to this glitzier era. He told the New Yorker this week that "Frankly, I'm just making money, trying to enjoy life." And make money he will; as the magazine points out, he'll take in least $125,000 in addition to what he earns for each week he stays on the show. "And if people are looking for news, I suggest they tune into a news program," Spicer told CNN in August.

Does this then mean that Spicer has recast himself as a straightforward entertainer? What is he bringing to the table exactly, talent-wise? Why do some people fail upward? The majority of DWTS viewers may feel fine-to-indifferent over his casting, but does Sean Spicer have a secret fanbase I don't know about? Or is ABC simply attempting to court two audiences: president 45’s most ardent supporters, and the people hoping for the petty pleasure of seeing a man they don’t like fall down on network TV?

I’m personally inclined to agree with Bergeron, who didn’t get to be a beloved TV host without learning a thing or five about what America wants from their guilty pleasures. “For me, as host, I always gaze into the camera’s lens and imagine you on the other side, looking for a two hour escape from whatever life hassles you’ve been wrestling with,” he wrote in his August 21st statement.

We’re at a point in the American political landscape in which party alignments involve deciding whether or not you’re okay with children living and dying in chain-link pens. Regardless of where your opinions fall on the political spectrum, why would anyone want a visual reminder of our nation’s ever-widening divide when they’re simply trying to enjoy a frothy dance competition show? I certainly don't.

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