Spicer's Job is an Impossible One

Sometimes, it’s best to save our hatred.

The outcry against White House press secretary Sean Spicer is pretty widespread by now, and understandably so.

In attempting to justify last week’s U.S. air strike against Syria, Spicer this week reminded everyone of the chemical weapons attack that provoked it – fair enough – but then compared Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to Hitler – which is not fair enough.

“Someone as despicable as Hitler, who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer declared.

Oh, really?

Then, given a chance to clarify, Spicer made things worse, declaring Hitler “was not using the gas on his own people the same way Assad is doing.”

To which, after a brief pause, Spicer further added, of Hitler, “He brought them into the Holocaust center – I understand that. But I’m saying in the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent – into the middle of towns.”

Leaving aside the unfortunate “Holocaust centers” misnomer for the death camps, Spicer came up a little short on history, and a lot short on numbers. Poison gas, mobile gassing vans and gas chambers were a vital part of Hitler’s genocide. Thousands of Jews were gassed — each day — at Auschwitz.

Was Spicer wrong?

Yes, of course. And he’s apologized, with apparent sincerity, on national TV.

So save your anger, your public cries of outrage, for something a little more substantial. Spicer’s a shnook, not a Holocaust denier. Save your anger for the genuine haters, the anti-Semites, those morons.

Spicer’s a guy with an impossible job. A White House press secretary has to take oral exams, on live TV, on every conceivable aspect of life on this planet. And unlike his boss, the president, he can’t hide in his office for months at a time and duck questions to which he hasn’t got the faintest clue.

The job of press secretary’s a tough one for anybody who attempts to handle it. In Spicer’s case, it’s an impossible one. Aside from being justifiably mocked on “Saturday Night Live,” he’s got to be the front man for a president who has only a passing relationship with actual facts, and then bends them, and Spicer’s the one taking daily flak for this.

Should we hold him accountable for his Hitler remarks? Absolutely. As mouthpiece for the president, he ought to have a better grasp of history. And he ought to know better than to compare any tyrant – even Assad – to Hitler. And he ought to know the special sensitivity and the enduring pain that lingers, even 72 years after Hitler’s demise, over the crimes he committed.

But save your hatred, and your public declarations of outrage, for genuine villains.

Spicer’s a shnook, not a Holocaust denier.

And if that’s the best defense he’s got, so be it.