In the heat of the summer, comedienne Kathy Griffin posted a photo of herself holding what is supposed to be the decapitated head of President Donald Trump. After the photo went viral, many people shunned Griffin and claimed it was a heinous act. For those who may not remember, the heinous act was allowing Donald Trump to be elected president.
The press had a field day with Griffin and it seems that no one is allowing her to live down this moment in her life. But then again, what she did was something that late-night talk show hosts and comedians have been doing with words since Donald Trump got elected. All she did was give everyone a visual of what they have been thinking for the last few months.
After the photo was released and people had their chance to be visually stunned by it, she was pulled from her long-standing job as co-host of CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live with co-host and long-time friend, Anderson Cooper. Kathy Griffin posted a short YouTube video called Kathy Griffin: Hell of a Story and fights back against the people that harassed her when this broke out. My real question is, why is this something so controversial?
While I understand the gruesome nature of the photo and how it can be misconstrued, does anyone know what Kathy Griffin does for a living? She is a comedian. Since being elected, many comedians have been making Trump jokes since he got into the Presidential race. As a result of this photo, she lost a lot of jobs and isn’t necessarily unemployable, but this hasn’t helped her any.
Maybe if we stopped looking at late night comedy as the news and stop looking at the news as a source of comedy, she wouldn’t be in this predicament. News media outlets such as CNN, NBC, CBS, and many more are being left to rot because so many people don’t believe them anymore. In one foul swoop, news organizations are placed under the heat lamps of societal interrogation and it won’t seem to stop.
Recently, the Washington Post underwent harsh scrutiny from Project Veritas, an ultra-right-wing conservative media organization that aims to make regular publications appear to have a left-wing bias. The scoop was that with the changing of the Post’s slogan to Democracy Dies in Darkness, they decided to use undercover footage of reporters from the Post to “bust” their leftist plot.
While this sounds like more of Batman movie, people should know that this isn’t news. It’s a bottom of the barrel group looking for a reason to discredit a powerful news organization that has persevered through decades of the evolving world of journalism. Project Veritas went so far as to send a reporter to meet with someone from the Washington Post, claiming she had been harassed by Roy Moore.
The Post later ran a story about this encounter and several others about how Veritas has indeed been harassing the Post about their “corrupt” ways. Maybe if reporters, or operatives as The Post put it, at Project Veritas focused on real news instead of trying to cover the insolent mess Congressional Republicans are making of this country, then maybe people would care about what they have to say.
Kathy Griffin, did nothing wrong in the photo of Donald Trump. People everyday don’t want him in office and she wasn’t proposing an act of violence but visualized what people may want to happen to him. To keep it simple, just remember this, Kathy Griffin is funny, TMZ is a guilty pleasure from regular news, Stephen Colbert is a well-informed talk-show host, and CBS News is hard news.