My initial thought was to defend Kathy Griffin with the same excuse I'd give to a criticism of Joan Rivers or Sam Kinison. You ask a comedian to be outrageous and edgy, then you scream "You've gone too far." You can't have it both ways.
BUT...
Kathy Griffin is not in the same league as Rivers or Kinison. And she was not trying to be funny. Look at her expression. Look at the severed head. You don't show this to somebody and say "Wanna laugh?"
You don't need to have written books on comedy to know NOT FUNNY when you see it.
That's not funny.
It wasn't intended to be funny. Ask her co-conspirator, the fashionista who took the picture.
"Kathy and I are friends and we worked together before," burbled somebody named Tyler Shields. According to him (or her, or whatever) she said, ‘I’d love to do something political. I’d love to make a statement." So, according to Tyler (or is it Taylor) “We kind of figured out what would be the best image to make."
Something...disturbing? UNFUNNY?
"That’s what art is meant to do,” he huffed. “Some people look at it and they love it. Some people look at it and they hate it…but this is not real. We didn’t kill anybody...It’s no different from a movie. It just happens to be a still image. I can’t speak for her, [but] I know she loves to stir the pot. For me, I love the idea we have freedom of speech."
There you go.
"We didn't kill anybody," we just showed an image that suggested the President of the United States had just been beheaded. Don't think that Kathy Griffin did it. She's just holding up the head.
"Freedom of Speech." Which has been used to defend piracy, leaking and stealing private documents, and who knows, maybe Jihadi John and his pals have used it when distributing photos of REAL severed heads they've held up. Like, attention media, don't censor those ISIS atrocity photos, any more than you censor pix of Kardashian's ass. It's ALL good."
Meanwhile, CNN has grandly announced the talentless Kathy Griffin won't be yapping and spoiling next year's New Year's Eve broadcast. And the USO has declared they never really hired her, ever.
It's not often a comic gets the front page for a joke gone wrong, but let's remember, this was NOT a joke. It was somebody using their celebrity to get publicity and make a serious political statement. It was only after, that Griffin tried to defend this as some kind of joke gone wrong.
And that's a bit of an insult to the great comedians past (Lenny Bruce) and present (Bill Maher) who intentionally choose when and how to make a satiric point and don't back down.
Griffin has, of course, apologized. That's what you do. Whether you believe you've done something wrong or not.
Griffin: "I am sorry. I went too far, I made a mistake and I was wrong."
Which puts her in the martyr category, right? You probably know of Tony Hendra's book, "Going too Far."
When a comedian "goes too far," as the late Joan Rivers or Sam Kinison did, the comedian has the option to apologize or to defend the profession. Here, Griffin wasn't going for a laugh at all. But when the criticism came, she defended herself as if she was just a comedian who misjudged what was funny.
Ideally, "I went too far" is a badge of honor. It's something to snicker over once the rage has died down. Tony Hendra "went too far" when he stabbed John Lennon via "Magical Misery Tour," aka "Genius is Pain," on a National Lampoon album. It was brutal in its mimicry of Lennon's self-important angst (and quoted liberally from John's startling interview a few months earlier in Rolling Stone). It was also funny. It was also satire.
Jokes about religion, sex or death are surefire "I went too far" material, and the boast from a Richard Pryor, a George Carlin, or even a Joan Rivers, is that it turned out to be not only funny, but not too terrible after all. Groundbreaking, in fact. Pryor saying Nigger? Great! Carlin exposing the words you can't say on TV? Now you can say them (although Conan, on cable, is censored on FUCK but can say SHIT). Rivers? Her Liz Taylor jokes made Liz diet and stop looking like "she has more Chins than a Chinese phone book."
But this photo? No. Griffin is a very minor comic and has never really used her voice or face to add to her humor (compare Ruth Buzzi, who did both). If anything, Griffin's pose makes the picture even more gruesome.
Apologizing yet again, Griffin said, “I’m a comic. I cross the line. I move the line, and then I cross it. I went way too far.”
Only in this picture she wasn't being a comic. When you're a comic you go for laughs. Call her, what, a "performance artist" now? Let's say she's no Brother Theodore. And Brother Theodore would never have done something like this. I knew him. He had a very strong internal sense of right and wrong. Actually, most comedians do. They instinctively know NOT to cross a line, even when there's the euphoria of laughter swelling up from the audience. They self-edit.
I had a discussion with Steve Allen once, and we talked about things that CAN'T be joked about. "There's nothing you can't make a joke about," he said. "It's a case of whether you should." Steve would sometimes think of some tasteless joke and give it to a comedian whose image suited it better.
Steve also took the occasional chance. I remember him doing his New York City radio show, and a commercial for Alco Windows. He dutifully spoke the effusive lines of praise for the company, and then ad-libbed, "Those Alkies really know windows!"
Was he afraid of offending Alco, or alcoholics? Obviously not. He wasn't being mean-spirited or insensitive, he was "just joking." What we often admire about comedians, with Don Rickles a good example, is how they can say whatever they want. The shock laugh is that it's often what we're all thinking.
While many of us don't think much of Donald Trump, we don't wish to sever his head. We wouldn't hold up his severed head so his wife and his kid can see it.
Mr. Trump's Tweet was: "Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!"
Melania Trump (whose name was once comically pronounced Melanoma by Jimmy Kimmel) offered this statement: "“As a mother, a wife, and a human being, that photo is very disturbing. When you consider some of the atrocities happening in the world today, a photo opportunity like this is simply wrong and makes you wonder about the mental health of the person who did it.”
Did Melania complain that Kimmel was insulting her and cancer victims by the "Melanoma" malaprop? No. Kimmel is recognized as a comedian. Kathy Griffin has always been more of a pain in the ass. A raconteur, maybe. A "professional trash talker." Another of the media whores who likes to pose naked (even if nobody wants to look).
Griffin was encouraged every step of the way, with every wrist-slap just adding to her notoriety. CNN kept her on after she dropped "the F-bomb" (as they say) and pretended to perform fellatio (or, to use the technical term, "blow") Anderson Cooper.
If she did get banned (from "The View" for some joke about Barbara Walters having sex with Howard Stern) it was good publicity for both parties.
It's an irony that it was Kathy Griffin who Tweeted in rage when Gaby Giffords was shot: "Congresswoman in AZ who is on Saray Palin's crosshairs map was SHOT in the head2day. Happy now Sarah?"
Poe said there are some things of which no jest can be made, but sometimes the joker doesn't know this, until it's a bit too late.
The severed Donald Trump photo? Actually, she's done worse. I mean, all those times she's been naked in public. Kathy Griffin naked is much more horrifying. And, as always...NOT FUNNY.
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