When Anthony Scaramucci let loose with an X-rated diatribe to a reporter from The New Yorker, he amazed and amused a nation already feeling somewhat punch-drunk from a succession of President Trump’s tirades. Scaramucci promptly dominated the cable news programs and gave late-night talk-show hosts juicy material to boot. And then, suddenly, he was gone.
The pundits missed the real lasting impact of the shoot-from-the-hip vulgarity of Trump's swaggering "Mini-Me." The president’s verbal hit man scored a decisive victory in the administration’s drive to make America crass.
Scaramucci lowered the bar just a little more on our culture’s accepted standards of civility, just as Trump did during his presidential campaign when a television clip revealed him to brag about how he could grab women in private places and get away with it.
The proof is in the media. The New Yorker kicked off the free-for-all by publishing his remarks verbatim, no asterisks or trigger warnings. So did The Washington Post, Buzzfeed and even the sacred New York Times, the Good Gray Lady that often sets standards for the industry. It’s clear we are already living in a brave new world. In 14 years at the New York Post and New York Daily News combined, tweeted New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, “I don’t think I ever (had) a byline over a word rhyming w clock.
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