XPost: alt.politics.media, alt.stupidity, alt.feminism
XPost: uk.politics.misc

Well, at least we know there’s still a line.

On Tuesday, when Tyler Shields’ intentionally provocative photo
of comedian Kathy Griffin holding what appeared to be the
bloody, severed head of President Trump hit social media, the
condemnation was swift, complete and unequivocal. Whatever her
initial intention, Griffin found herself the subject of
something that has become increasingly rare in American
discourse: bipartisan, multicultural agreement.

Virtually everyone in America was horrified.

Some, including Donald Trump Jr., attempted to politicize the
moment by making Griffin a de facto spokeswoman for “the left,”
but it was impossible to make that stick.

No one, not even the president’s most outspoken critics,
defended the image.

Instead, the words “vile,” “disgusting” and “unacceptable”
united the social media response from both sides of the aisle
and every social stratum. By late Tuesday afternoon, Griffin had
called for Shields to take the image down and issued an abject
apology via Instagram. Stripped of her usual high-glam look,
Griffin conceded that the image was too upsetting and literally
begged for forgiveness. “I’m a comic, I cross the line, I move
the line and then I cross it. I went way too far.... I made a
mistake and I was wrong.”

For many, the apology was too little too late; the president and
the first lady took to Twitter on Wednesday to express their
personal hurt and outrage, and CNN, which had initially taken a
“wait-and-see” attitude, quickly announced that it was firing
Griffin from her 10-year gig as co-host of its New Year’s Eve
countdown with Anderson Cooper.

(There have also been calls for further cancellations, including
Griffith’s July 7 appearance “In Conversation” with Sen. Al
Franken [D-Minn.] at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the
Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. Franken told CNN the event
will go on as planned.)

Cooper let his feelings be known almost immediately, tweeting
that he was “appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part
in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate.”

His reaction sparked, in turn, a fair amount of social media
scoffing, as many pointed out that Cooper recently had been
involved in professional line-crossing.

In the wake of Trump’s recent firing of FBI Director James B.
Comey, Cooper had suggested to Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord that
if the president “took a dump on his desk” Lord would defend it
(for which Cooper then apologized) and rolled his eyes at a
response from Kellyanne Conway (for which he didn’t.)

Of course, “the line” has always been open to negotiation. As
was written in the 1987 film “Broadcast News” — which remains
the bible of the intersection of news, politics and popular
culture — sometimes it’s hard to avoid crossing the line
“because they keep moving the little sucker.”

But it has not vanished entirely, or even moved as far as
Griffin and Shields thought it had.

Which is strangely reassuring given the state of our nation,
where just last week Greg Gianforte, campaigning to become a
House representative for Montana, reacted to a reporter asking
about healthcare by body-slamming him.

For which Gianforte also apologized, but only after he had won
the seat.

Indeed, in the almost two years since Trump entered the
presidential race, many seemingly unmovable boundaries have been
breached and redrawn.

As a candidate he crossed lines of civil conduct, threatening
Hillary Clinton directly with jail (“Lock her up”) and seemingly
with assassination (when he suggested that Clinton’s bodyguards
disarm and “let’s see what happens” or that “the 2nd Amendment
people” might have a solution should she, as president, curtail
their rights.)

A similar vitriol fuels the Trump White House, where late-night
rage-tweets against individuals, Democrats and the “fake media”
have become the new normal. And increasingly, the media are
responding with a new normal of their own. After Comey was
fired, Cooper was not the only journalist to vent his emotions;
as my colleague Lorraine Ali wrote, even Wolf Blitzer blanched
and Chuck Todd was reduced to a flabbergasted “Wow.”

Traditional news outlets, including this one, are pushing back
with the type of direct and often accusatory language — the
accurate use of the word “lie,” for an example, became a topic
of media debate — rarely used for a sitting president, much less
one in office for less than six months.

And as for comedians, well, Trump’s bare-knuckles approach suits
most of them just fine. After the election, Seth Meyers revealed
a surprisingly deadly aim, Jimmy Kimmel recently became the face
of healthcare, and Stephen Colbert, having re-embraced stinging
political humor, shot to the top of the late-night ratings,
leaving Jimmy Fallon to regret that he ever thought to muss
candidate Trump’s hair.

Indeed, until Griffin’s photo went live, it seemed there was
nothing negative a comedian could say about Trump that would get
them in trouble; when Colbert recently went on a profane rant
that included a crude reference to the president’s mouth,
#firecolbert spluttered briefly to life and quickly went out.
Colbert apologized, but to anyone who found his remark
homophobic, not to the president.

Far more alarming is the ongoing, and increasingly vitriolic,
battle between average citizens; the red/blue conflict, which
normally recedes after a presidential election, has grown only
more pronounced. Even as statues dedicated to the Confederate
generals who literally wanted to divide the country are pulled
down, another division, deeper and more difficult to define,
takes firmer root.

Social media, particularly Twitter, has never run on subtlety or
complex thought; for better or worse, a single remark or image
can spark a trend or ruin a career.

That it has become the main platform of political discourse
makes fading lines only blurrier. “It was only a joke,” a
refrain once restricted to sassy teenagers, has become the
standard excuse for an offensive or objectionable remark, and
one the president has used often.

But as the professional comedian just discovered, some jokes
really aren’t funny and some lines still cannot be crossed.

And though it would have been better to be reminded of this in
another, less offensive and news-cycle-generating way, it’s
still good to know.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-kathy-griffin- 20170601-story.html
 

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)