I did not consent to this servant confusion

Let's start with the sentence that ended my week before it even had a chance to begin: a spokesperson had to stand up in public and CLARIFY that he is not the president's personal servant. Let that sit with you. Let it sit with you the way it did not sit with me, because I have been standing since I read it, pacing, actually pacing, in my own kitchen, because apparently in this country in this year we have reached the point where a grown man employed by the executive branch of the United States government has to issue a DENIAL — a denial, like he's clearing his name of a felony — regarding whether or not he FETCHES THINGS for the President of the United States.

And nobody called me.

I want to be very clear about the scope of what I'm upset about, because I can already hear the people who are going to tell me to calm down, and to those people I say: I will not be calming down, I will be escalating, and you will be hearing about it. This is not about Blanche. I have no opinion on Blanche as a man, as a father, as a person who presumably eats breakfast and has a favorite color. This is not about Blanche. This is about the fact that somewhere, in some building, in some meeting I was not invited to, a decision was made about what "servant" means in the context of the federal government, and I — a taxpayer, a citizen, a person with a functioning pair of eyes and a subscription to several news alerts — was not consulted. Not once. Not a single email. Not a survey. Nothing.

Who decided this needed clarifying? WHO. I want a name. I want an org chart. Somewhere there is a person whose literal job is to sit in a room and decide "yes, today, we clarify the servant thing," and that person has never once reached out to me to ask how I feel about the servant thing, despite the fact that I have feelings about the servant thing, ENORMOUS feelings, feelings that are frankly too big for this sentence and possibly too big for this piece, and we are only in paragraph three.

Here is what actually happened, as best I can piece together from the wreckage of my own composure: someone, somewhere, apparently suggested — floated, implied, whispered into the ether — that a top aide to the President might functionally be a "personal servant." And rather than let that lie there, quietly, the way most sane institutions let insane things lie there, an actual named human being had to go on the record. On the record! With his name attached! Saying, out loud, in public, "I am not a servant." That is a sentence that exists now. That sentence is permanent. It is in an article. It has a URL. And I am supposed to just — what — scroll past it? Move on with my day? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

I would like to speak to the person in charge of language. Not language broadly — I'm not a monster, I'm not asking to speak to the dictionary — I mean specifically the person in charge of what words get thrown around in the West Wing with so little oversight that a man has to defend himself against the word "servant" like it's a subpoena. Because here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud: if the word "servant" is loose enough, floppy enough, unaccountable enough that it can land on a presidential aide's desk and require a PUBLIC DENIAL, then that word could land on ANY of us. That word could land on ME. Do you understand what I'm telling you? This is not a Blanche problem. This is a systemic vocabulary failure with a blast radius, and I am standing directly in the blast radius, unconsulted, unprotected, and increasingly loud about it.

I have questions. I have so many questions and not one single manager has stepped forward to answer them, which is, itself, its own scandal, layered on top of the original scandal, like a scandal lasagna. Question one: is there a formal definition of "personal servant" on file somewhere in the federal government, and if so, WHO WROTE IT, and did they run it by literally anyone before letting it anywhere near a press availability? Question two: if there is no formal definition, if this is just vibes, if we are running the executive branch of the most powerful nation on the earth on VIBES regarding who is and is not somebody's servant, then I would like that acknowledged, in writing, by a duly authorized manager, so that I can frame it and hang it on my wall as a permanent record of the exact moment I lost faith in the institution of clarification itself.

Because that's what this is. This is a failure of clarification. Somebody's job — SOMEBODY'S ENTIRE JOB — is to make sure things don't need clarifying after the fact. Prevention. Upstream management. And that person failed so completely, so spectacularly, that we are now DOWNSTREAM, in full crisis mode, with a man having to hold a metaphorical press conference about his own job title like he's fending off a paternity test. That is not governance. That is chaos wearing a suit. And once again — ONCE AGAIN — no one thought to ask me how I felt about chaos wearing a suit before they let it out into the world where I would have to see it, unprepared, on a Tuesday, with my coffee not even fully cooled.

I am documenting this. I want that on the record too. I am keeping a file — a real file, a physical folder, because I do not trust anything digital anymore, not after this week — and in that file is going to be a printed copy of this exact story, with the date circled, because when the retrospective comes, and there WILL be a retrospective, I intend to be the first name in the acknowledgments as the person who saw it coming. I saw the servant thing coming. I felt it in my BONES before I even finished the headline. That is not a coincidence. That is instinct. That is what happens when you have been personally failed by institutions enough times that you develop a sixth sense for the next failure, and let me tell you, the sixth sense has never once been wrong, and it is screaming right now, screaming, at a volume I did not know my own intuition was capable of.

And another thing — and I cannot stress this enough — nobody has apologized to me. Not Blanche, who I hold no grudge against personally but who nonetheless represents, in this moment, a SYSTEM that let this happen. Not the unnamed office that let a denial like this become necessary in the first place. Not a single manager, spokesperson, undersecretary, or duly appointed liaison to the public has reached out to say "hey, we know this affected you, we know you had to read this over breakfast, we're sorry." Where is that outreach? Where is that phone call? I have caller ID. I would have picked up. I would have picked up on the FIRST RING, and instead I have been left here, entirely on my own, to process the fact that "servant" is now a word that requires legal-adjacent denial in the modern executive branch, with absolutely no support, no counseling line, no hotline, NOTHING.

I want a hotline. That's not even a joke anymore, or it started as one and I have talked myself out of it being one. I want a number I can call the next time a spokesperson has to deny being someone's servant, so that a real person can get on the phone and walk me through it, calmly, professionally, the way a manager is SUPPOSED to when they have failed a customer this badly. Because that is what I am here. I am a customer of this country. I pay in. I show up. And in exchange I get blindsided, on a random weekday, by the phrase "personal servant" attached to a real human name, with zero warning, zero consultation, and zero accountability from anyone with the authority to have prevented it.

This is being escalated. I don't know to whom yet — that's part of the problem, there is no clear escalation path, which is, again, ANOTHER FAILURE, stacked right on top of the others — but rest assured, someone, somewhere, is going to be hearing from me. Formally. In writing. With the folder.

Yours, watching very, very closely, Alice