the White House Press Secretary to President Donald Trump, was refused service at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia based on “moral grounds.” The owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, simply did not want to serve somebody she found so politically offensive, and so she didn’t.

Since then the Red Hen restaurant in Washington, DC, which has no affiliation with the one in Lexington, has been getting attacked by both left and right on social media.

Keep in mind, this is not the restaurant that refused Sanders service. No matter, even after they explicitly stated that this was all a case of mistaken identity and they had nothing to do with the Huckabee Affair, people still demanded that they take a political position on the matter. The Red Hen responded by saying that businesses in DC are prohibited from discriminating against people for political affiliation because they are in a federal district. This wasn’t good enough. People still pressed them. Okay, we know you’re not the restaurant that was involved, and we know that you are subject to different laws and therefore don’t have a choice to make in the matter, but what if you did have a choice? What if you were the restaurant she walked in to? What would you do then?

And so it goes.

And now Donald Trump is tweeting furiously at the Red Hen in Virginia ( the right one) in the hopes of destroying their business.

The owner, likely seeing in herself a patriotic exemplar, stands by her act of micro resistance while the pitchfork and torch crowd– from both the left and right–gather, eager to burn some shit down.

So surreal and terrible and hilarious and scary.

It’s amazing to me just how quickly things are reduced to the symbolic. All the nuance, history, vulnerability and complexity that informs a person– or a restaurant, even–are swept to the side, reduced to little more than the baleful projections of a furious, roiling,  unconscious. The appetite right now is for enemies rather than friends, so if you’re caught in the public eye you become what that public needs you to be, not who you might actually be.

And so when I see Sarah Huckabee Sanders tossed about in the media, I think of Monica Lewinsky.

They really look alike.

 .      

I mean, they really do.

But beyond that, remember also how Monica Lewinsky was treated by the press and public? She was despised– crucified, by both the left and right, for the sins of Bill Clinton. Honest to God, I think it’s a miracle she didn’t jump out a window. But she survived, admirably, in fact, and it’s as if her ghost is now visible in “the perfect smokey eye” of Sarah Huckabee, and the antipathy that Lewinsky withstood is now being visited upon her. Both of them appear as privileged white girls, Beckys, really, and their ambition, greased by a system that favours people like them, propelled them right next to the most powerful man in the world, and this, this seems to be something our society simply cannot abide.

Ask Hillary Clinton.

And so these women rise up into the culture like cautionary tales. Reduced to cartoon figures, they float slowly above us, soft targets, while we, the rabble beneath cast stones and curses. If you’re a woman and your cultural centrality can in any way be traced back to a powerful man, you will be hated for it– by men, and by women, it would seem. This is America, and if you’re a woman and you fly too close to the sun, you’re declared a witch and you’re going to get burned, whether you deserve it or not.

As many of you know, I grew up in the same part of Ottawa as Canadian Prime Minister and Rolling Stone Cover Boy, Justin Trudeau.

Although I was a few years older, our paths still crossed many times, and even if we’re far from good friends, we have an amicable, nodding relationship that has well positioned me to assist him and the Liberal party in the creation of a series of Justin Trudeau romance novellas.

What follows are excerpts from some of the books:

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Book Title: Never The Same Way Twice

His fame and internationally renowned good-looks made it hard for Justin to live the simple life he so often craved. Sure, he got a lot of satisfaction from being the most influential man on the planet, photobombing wedding shots and ministering to refugees, but what he really missed was just rocking out at concerts like an average Canadian, an average Canadian who was lucky to live in the second best country in the world, according to U.S. News & World Report.

But tonight, tonight Justin was going to let the world save itself.

Disguised as a relatively plain Canadian– but for his fantastically lithe and toned body– Justin was going to let loose at the big Blue Rodeo concert.

It had been a long time since he’d rock n’ rolled.

It’s funny how two lives might entwine, and little did Blue Rodeo super fan Brenna Macdonald know, as she took the number 95 OC Transpo bus in from Orleans to catch the show, that her life was about to be forever altered.

Book Title: A Song Of Ice And Fire And Good Governance

Sansa’s heart was racing, galloping so hard that she was sure he must hear it. He took her chin in his hands, his hands made so strong by all the beautiful planks he regularly executed, and raised her lips toward his. At that moment he ceased to be Justin Trudeau, the widower Prime Minister of Canada, the lost Parliamentary Democracy of Westeros and only hope in the battle against the White Walkers, the White Walkers who had taken his bride, and he became something else. He became a vessel of passion.

“Je veux faire un amour doux mais ferme envers vous, ma reine,” he said to her in his mystical language, as he pulled her to him.

She could feel his manhood pressing against her, his lips now so passionately, so respectfully, on hers, and her release was so great that Sansa felt as if she was marble melting under the light.

Book Title: For Love Of Country

It was the best Pride parade that Toronto had ever seen, and the joy of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as he marched the streets– his white shirt soaking wet and clinging to his smooth body from all the water gun fights– was infectious. Sal, like everybody else, could not stop smiling as he watched from the crowded sidewalk. And then, as if a divine hand had ordained it, Justin’s eyes locked with his. The free-spirited and inclusive leader of a great nation beckoned for Sal to join him on the street, and immediately security parted the sea of people to make way for him. Sal, in a wheelchair and impotent since the mortar explosion in Kandahar, rolled out to him. The Prime Minister asked for permission, and then playfully sat on his lap and put his arm around him as they proceeded down Church Street and into a future neither one of them could have imagined.

She was young and pretty, a student studying to become a dietician, and her youth, cast amidst the somewhat resigned and much older counterculture of porters, seemed to make everybody a little giddy. Her innocence and simple optimism was a narcotic, and all the men stood a little straighter and attempted to make charming remarks around her. She cheerfully pushed me about in my wheelchair as if it was some high school game and not life on the slippery slope, and it made me want to be outside, in the sun of some past, leaning back and resting my head against her and the limitless smell of her hair… but no, no– there is much work to do.

We pass so many people in the hospital corridors. The always smiling Happy Cancer Ladies, who’ve either discovered their bliss through illness or are frozen in panic, unable to move their focus from the positive for one second lest they shatter into a million pieces. Gratitude radiates from them, and they smile at me as if I’m a precocious child, making gentle, almost holy room for my slender passage. And then suddenly, I was part of a long procession of wheelchairs passing by—bald and pale cancer patients, a girl burned with acid from an honour attack and an elderly man with skin so thin you could almost see into his past. The Happy Cancer Ladies stand aside and beam, practically applauding, they’re so sincerely proud of us.

Men who wear brown coveralls run the elevators. All day they live in these boxes, these boxes that open and close like respiration. They sit there, flipping through the Toronto Sun and wondering what else the world might have to offer them, and when the new porter wheels me in, something happens. It’s like everybody has had three drinks and is now wearing their favourite shirt. Conversation pipes up, and everybody is talking and laughing and flirting, dispensing wisdom and jokes about the myriad complications of negotiating the underground tunnels.

“I was her mission, “ I say, “I am the treasure she has returned with.”

The young girl laughed because that is what she does, but the elevator man seemed intrigued, “You are a treasure?” “Yes,” I said mystically, “I can grant you a wish. You tell me what you want and I will make sure you get it.” I expected a joke, but I could see in his face that he would not let this happen. He looked at me, stating plainly, “I want my mother to be here with me.”

I put my hand on his forearm, ” You have to close your eyes and imagine her, thinking of the best, safest times you spent together, and through this you will summon her, and you will feel her touch upon your skin, her scent returning…”

It cast a little spell, this, and the girl made the sound of a small animal that wanted to be hugged, while the man stared off at a distant horizon. As I was being wheeled out, the elevator man wanted to tell me something, a message from a song by King Crimson that his language inhibited him from pronouncing, and as he leaned toward me trying to spell the title out, the doors closed, the potential of this information lingering between us for a moment, and then falling away.