Aside from the whole “cozying up to an administration that refers to the media as an ‘enemy of the people’” thing, the most objectionable part of some White House Correspondents Dinner attendees willfully misinterpreting Michelle Wolf’s joke—“I loved you as Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale,” she said—about Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ role as an enforcer as a joke about her appearance is that they were starting from the assumption that Ann Dowd, the Emmy-winning actress who plays Aunt Lydia on the hit Hulu series, is ugly. And we here at The A.V. Club are not cool with that.
Now, the Los Angeles Times has asked Dowd what she thinks about all that nonsense as part of a longer profile. And while Dowd is too classy to address the subtextual insult implicit in conservative outcry against the joke, she does offer the following strong words for Sanders. They’re words that come from a place of compassion for the character of Aunt Lydia, if not the real-life current press secretary:
From my experience, Lydia is a straightforward person with a low tolerance for confusion and nonsense. Had she been offered the job of press secretary for the present administration, she most likely would have turned it down. Also, Lydia has the comfort of believing that everything she says and does is in service to God. Ms. Sanders has no such luxury.