Tasos Katopodis/AFP/Getty Images Fourth Estate Sean Spicer Is Washington’s First Pariah

Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer has achieved the impossible.

Washington routinely forgives its philanderers, drug addicts and alcoholics, embezzlers, perjurers, bribers and bribees, liars, burglars and tax evaders, granting them the redemption of another term in office or a job in a lobbying shop or think tank after their scandal passes. It even absolved a drunk who killed a young lady, giving him a prince’s funeral when he died. The writer who said that there are no second acts in American life never lived here.


But that iron law hasn’t helped Spicer. Since leaving the White House this summer, he has gained admittance to a circle of one: He has become a Washington pariah. Nobody wants to be anywhere near him, but everyone wants to talk smack about him. He’s not just a punchline. He’s become a national laughing stock ever since his cameo on the Emmy Awards this week, where he attempted a joke about his most famous White House lie.

How did this happen? Where did Spicer screw up? Your average White House press secretary has little trouble converting his former status into a hot job, even if he or she leaves the job unloved by the masses. Josh Earnest gum-flaps for NBC News now, and Dana Perino does the same at Fox News Channel. George Stephanopoulos presides over oceans of airtime for ABC, including a Sunday morning show. Jay Carney left the White House to cash in with a gig at Amazon. Robert Gibbs took a similar path, taking a big job under the McDonald’s Golden Arches.

Spicer’s inability to secure a TV contract from any of the news networks—especially when they’re desperate for somebody to take the counterpoint and defend President Donald Trump—speaks volumes of his contamination. Another measure of Spicer’s failure: He signed with Bob Barnett, the big macher among Washington talent representatives. If Barnett can’t sell him, who can?

POLITICO's Tara Palmeri reckons that the media business’ resistance has much to do with Spicer’s low e-score, a measure of public opinion of celebrities. Spicer’s April e-score marks for “aggressiveness” and “creepiness” were relatively high, Palmeri reported, and respondents rated him more aggressive than the average politician. Spicer, it should be noted, hasn’t been an absolute media washout. He has turned down a slot on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars. The show must have felt that it needed a villain in the competition.

Spicer’s case isn’t hopeless. Washingtonians—and many Americans—tend not to hold long-term grudges against even the greatest transgressors, as Senator Ted Kennedy's case proves. John Dean was sentenced to prison for his role in the Watergate affair, then he slowly worked his way back to respectability, first as an investment banker and then as a memoirist. Now he’s a CNN contributor, passing legal judgment on the alleged crimes of President Trump! Jack Abramoff did his time for conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion before returning to lobbying. Former Bill Clinton aide Dick Morris sucked a prostitute’s toes and eventually made a comeback as a book author, consultant, commentator and columnist. This isn’t to say that every Washingtonian who falls rises again, but most can if they put the effort into it. Even Clinton, who lost his law license for lying under oath, has earned public admiration for his humanitarian and philanthropic actions.

Where Spicer miscued was in leaping back into the spotlight too soon, before the unpleasant memories of his recent past had faded. (This is the same lesson the overexposed Hillary Clinton just learned.) Nobody in Washington objects that much to public servants like Spicer cashing in. Scratch a Washingtonian, you’ll find a gold-digger. What does rankle the populace are the blemished public servants who get too grabby. Spicer, it’s worth mentioning, was conspicuously shopping for a new job at the end of July, a month before his last day in the White House. Another Spicer rehabilitation error: Greater forgiveness goes to those who fall from high positions than those who take a lesser tumble, like Spicer, who was a midlevel cog in the Trump lying and dissembling operation. His fall didn’t have the sort of kinetic energy needed to give him the good dead-cat bounce of a Dean or Abramoff. If, hypothetically speaking, events were to cause the rapid descent of H.R. McMaster, James Mattis or John Kelly, they’d regain bankability much sooner than a Sean Spicer.

Finally, Spicer erred by not fully factoring in his legal exposure from the Trump Tower scandal, something he seems to be realizing only now. This morning, Axios’ Mike Allen reported that Spicer flipped out when asked about his note-taking practices. “Please refrain from sending me unsolicited texts and emails,” Spicer emailed Allen. “Should you not do so I will contact the appropriate legal authorities to address your harassment.” What sane news organization would employ a person, no matter how savvy, who might be called on soon to testify before the special counsel’s grand jury and who may possess notes documenting Trumpian wrongdoing? No wonder nobody is biting on his line. Spicer isn’t just contaminated for having been Trump’s liar. He might also be legally radioactive for knowing what went on in the Trump campaign and the Trump administration.

This being America, Spicer can expect only a limited time in pariahdom—as long as he takes the time now to cool his jets. Once he writes his Trump book, he’ll gain his revenge on the man who treated him like a scullery maid. The networks will come calling, begging, pleading for his presence. They always do.

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If you send unsolicited emails to [email protected], I’ll report you, too! My email alerts beg your forgiveness, my Twitter feed has six more months in jail, and my RSS feed has been consigned to solitary confinement in a cold, wet, dark basement filled with broken glass and spiders.