Michelle Obama once told us everything we need to know about maintaining a sense of honor and dignity during these woeful times of bitterness and divide. She said, “When they go low, we go high.”
Kathy Griffin, alleged comedienne, certainly disregarded this dictum when she posted that picture of herself and the bloodied Trump head. But of course, she as well the rest of us are under no obligation to follow Mrs. Obama’s sage words. I’d suggest though that one should have some powerful reason to go against not just demonstrable wisdom, but plain common sense.
I see no such reason here. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t ironic, it made nor served no larger point. I’m so perplexed as to why she did it I’m half-tempted to conclude she just wasn’t in her right mind.
The argument I’m hearing, of course, is that we saw similar dread imagery, and far worse, involving President Obama throughout his years in office—nooses, lynched effigies, racist depictions best disdained and forgotten. And it’s true: those infamies were committed by nitwits on the right, both anonymous and famous (looking at you, Ted Nugent), with little repercussion.
Maybe that empowered Kathy Griffin to act. If so, although she wasn’t speaking for anyone but herself (we already know what the Obamas would have said about it), she should have felt empowered to go full-bore, Nugent-like. Wango tango, if you will.
Instead, she folded like a cheap shirt.
She first apologized (not, perhaps, her worst instinct), then said she was bullied, broken, her career over.
Sorry-not-sorry, but I can’t work up an erg of sympathy for you, Grifs. You sowed the wind, then flinched from the whirlwind. You threw a punch at a notoriously thin-skinned backbiter (who, by the way, is now at the pinnacle of power) then was surprised and dismayed at the flurry of blows coming back your way.
I’d never recommend anyone follow the worst examples of right-wing boorishness, but if you do, own that shit. Don’t apologize, don’t back down, and for sweet fuck’s sake, don’t publicly weep when things get ugly. What would Ted do? Something shitty, no doubt, but at no point would we see his tears.
Somebody got scalped last week, Kathy Griffin, but it sure wasn’t Trump.
