So I’ve been enjoying this Kathy Griffin story way more than I probably should be, but I don’t think it’s solely out of schadenfreude, although that definitely plays a part. Over the past few months it’s started to seem like nothing was off limits, nothing would offend people if it was attacking the right, and hurting Trump. CNN was caught actively working to help the DNC, and it hardly hurt them. Stephen Colbert made increasingly offensive remarks about Trump on several occasions, and it hardly hurt him beyond a brief hashtag campaign to fire him that died without ever gaining much real energy. We’ve seen people attack his wife and kids on Twitter, block people from attending his rallies, physically assault his supporters with pepper spray and bike locks, and outside right-leaning circles most of that hasn’t even garnered much attention, let alone serious indignation.
And then, for whatever reason, the world decided that in this case, it was too far. Chelsea Clinton took to Twitter to call it “vile and wrong”, Anderson Cooper denounced it as “completely inappropriate”, Jake Tapper called it “disgusting and inappropriate”, she was fired from CNN, she was fired from several advertising jobs - she was almost universally condemned, by Democrats and Republicans alike. Everybody wanted to distance themselves from that, and it’s genuinely reassuring to see that, as ugly as the political scene has gotten (on both ends of the spectrum), there are still lines that shouldn’t be crossed, and crossing this one got her punished in a big and very public way. Donald Trump, Jr. wrote that “this is what the left thinks is acceptable today”, and he had every right to be just as angry as he was, but I don’t think that was necessarily true. This is what Kathy Griffin thinks - or at least, thought - that the left finds acceptable, but the horrified backlash has shown that this really isn’t true, and that’s reassuring. Divided as America is, there are still some things pretty much all of us can agree are super wrong.
I don’t think she’s genuneiy sorry because she offended people, or because she joked about someone’s death, or because she traumatized the 11-year-old Barron who had to see a picture of what looked like his father’s decapitated head. She knew it would offend people, obviously; in behind-the-scenes footage from the photo shoot, she jokes about having to flee to Mexico after the pictures from the photoshoot went public. She wasn’t apologizing because it suddenly sunk in that joking about killing the president and posing like an ISIS extremist holding a decapitated head wasn’t funny - she was apologizing because she finally realized she’d crossed a line that would have consequences, and she realized she’d have to backtrack fast if she wanted to save her career as a B-list celebrity. She waited until she realized she was in serious trouble to apologize, even if that was only a few hours - before her official apology she actually defended the photo, claiming she wasn’t condoning actual violence and was just “mocking the Mocker in Chief.” And she didn’t really have any precedent to think that wouldn’t be enough, either. CNN recovered just fine from the WikiLeaks revelations. Colbert eventually issued a vague sorry-not-sorry for his remarks about Trump, and never faced any consequences for it. She finally apologized genuinely when she realized she’d dug herself in too deep. CNN, too, waited until they were sure it would legitimately damage them to fire her, claiming that they were “evaluating” and then announcing that they’d cut ties with her when the outrage didn’t die down.
Obviously, that isn’t the comforting part. She didn’t really understand or care that her actions were harmful until she realized it would seriously harm her career and possibly make her the subject of a Secret Service investigation, nor did CNN, a supposedly nonpartisan news source, immediately cut all ties with a woman who posted graphic photos suggesting that she’d killed the president. The genuinely comforting part, though, is that she did eventually apologize, and CNN did eventually fire her, and that wasn’t because of outrage from the right - that’s business as usual. It was because of outrage from the left, including multiple liberal commentators and Hillary Clinton’s own daughter. This photo wasn’t a genuine represenation of what “the left” thinks is acceptable or appropriate, at least not all of them - this was the result of a woman so deep in her liberal echo chamber, and so desperate for political relevancy, that she finally crossed a line that pretty much everyone agreed shouldn’t have been crossed. Disgusting as the images and the statement behind them are, it’s reassuring to know that most of us still agree on that much.
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