Civility

The pearls have yet to be clutched, is where we are in the latest nonsense political debate of the day, supposedly over civility.

This one involves a woman named Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of a Lexington, Va., restaurant, The Red Hen, who asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave after objections to the White House press secretary’s presence were noted by staff.

Thus sparking the usual round of tut-tuts from the right, making noise about the intolerant left, and then the same nonsense from the “both sides”-ists among Democrats who can’t seem to get out of their own way with their reflexive retreat to wanting to appear bipartisan, as if anyone on the right actually cares what a Democrat says.

First up among the mental gymnasts: former Obama top advisor David Axelrod, who took to Twitter on Sunday to express how he was “(k)ind of amazed and appalled” by the response to the Sanders-Red Hen story from the left.

“This, in the end, is a triumph,” Axelrod continued, for President Trump’s vision for America. “Now we’re divided by red plates and blue plates.”

After the predictable backlash from his own side of the political aisle, Axelrod, late Monday, went back to Twitter, which, if you’re keeping score on how it’s been working for him the past couple of days, he might want to avoid.

“I have said it was wrong,” he tweeted, to eject Sanders from the restaurant, “(b)ut unless or until (Trump) stops regularly insulting opponents and inciting his supporters, Sanders lacks standing when she lectures others about the need for civility.”

Well, there is that. Sanders, from her lectern in the White House, did lecture others on the need for civility today, though, of course, yeah, her boss was doing what he does, in terms of throwing a petulant fit.

“The Red Hen Restaurant,” the POTUS tweeted, this morning, “should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!”

That was before Sanders’ lecture to the White House press corps. This next one, also before Sanders harrumphed about civility.

“Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party. She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement.”

Let’s move beyond the childish, racist insult from the titular head of the free world about Waters’ IQ. As to what she actually said, as you already know, it was nowhere near “call(ing) for harm.”

“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Waters said on Saturday.

Which, OK, no, this isn’t even remotely civil, in the sense that being civil would be, seeing a Cabinet member in a restaurant or gas station and, at the least, leaving them alone, though the range of civil responses could also include trying to get a selfie.

Were you to, say, give them the treatment that Cersei got on “Game of Thrones” – “shame!” – probably not civil.

Also not civil, I would argue, is giving a speech accepting a congressional nomination in which you label people with whom you a disagreement in terms of certain public policies as being “evil advocates of socialism.”

Ben Cline, the Republican nominee in Virginia’s Sixth District, my home base, did just that in accepting the GOP nomination last month.

That one hit close to home for me, and not just because I vote in the Sixth. I’ve also been outspoken personally and editorially in my support for a single-payer health system, which I presume makes me, to Cline, one of those “evil advocates of socialism.”

I’ve also personally and editorially backed raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and I haven’t done this yet, but I’m thisclose to coming on board with the universal basic income concept that I see gaining more traction, even if it means I’m on the same side of an issue with Mark Zuckerberg, which, ew-w-w-w.

I bring up Ben Cline because he, yes, was among the pearl-clutchers on the Red Hen story.

In one tweet, Cline sanctimoniously apologized “for the rudeness of one liberal New York transplant,” dropping in, for some reason, that Wilkinson happens to be Meryl Streep’s cousin,” which, didn’t know that, thanks for sharing, maybe I should eat at The Red Hen in case Meryl drops by?

Cline also tweeted out a story about Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings going the “both sides” route on the Red Hen-Sanders story, under the words “bipartisan support for civility.”

This from the same guy who literally accepted his congressional nomination with a speech calling political opponents “evil.”

Funny thing is, I’ve known Ben Cline since his first campaign for the House of Delegates, way back in 2002, and written about him extensively over the years, up to and including his current run for Congress, and the Ben that I know isn’t the Ben who goes around calling Democrats “evil.”

His politics, no doubt, very conservative, much more so than I’m comfortable with, but then, there was also the Ben Cline who toured a local nonprofit that employs people with disabilities with me last year, and talked to me afterward for several minutes about addressing policies from the Obama administration that were threatening to close the operation down and throw dozens of people who wouldn’t be able to work anywhere else out of the labor force, maybe forever.

That Ben Cline, I could be 100 percent comfortable with as my congressman, even as a Republican that I’d often disagree with.

Maxine Waters, I’d be comfortable with, even if I personally wouldn’t go up to a Cabinet member eating a taco to call them out for the baby cages. Not my personality, but, damn, I want somebody that isn’t afraid to speak truth to power, and Maxine, no, not afraid.

The Axelrods, the Sanders – meh, dime a dozen. One a consultant, one about to be. If you’re looking for somebody to tell you what you want to hear, you call a consultant, and for a hefty fee, they’ll gladly oblige.

Which isn’t civil of me to say, but it’s also the truth.

And then, on this Trump nonsense: I’ll just say I miss the homespun incompetence of George W. Bush, who wasn’t a good president, but at least he wasn’t an asshole. And Donald Trump is, he’s a supreme asshole, and no, I’m not civil saying it like that, but this is a guy who calls people “animals,” mocks the disabled, grabs women “by the pussy,” stiffs people who have done work for him, and the rest, in addition to being uniquely unqualified for really any job, and most glaringly the job of being President of the United States.

I never thought I’d think this about a POTUS, but even considering the historic lack of intellect, acuity, curiosity, consistency, I could come close to stomaching Trump if he weren’t such a total prick.

What I fear is that, by the rule of not being able to get the toothpaste back into the tube, we’re now forever doomed to our public discourse not being about policy and issue nuance, but rather this endless circle jerk of increasingly mean tweets that has come to replace anything substantive in terms of political debate.

Look at me. “I fear.” Ha. Civility, as we know it, is dead, as in cartoonishly-runned-over-in-the-middle-of-the-road-by-a-steam-roller dead.

Column by Chris Graham