• Horse-faced saggy-butt and out-of-work Kathy Griffin proves there's sti

    From Pure Malice@21:1/5 to All on Thu Aug 17 05:23:17 2017
    XPost: alt.drugs.hard.grey, alt.asshole.al-gore, va.general
    XPost: alt.society.civil-disob

    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
     

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