Carl,
No, behind the "babble", as you call it, there is a serious issue. It has to do
with freedom of speech. When Obama became President, the New Yorker had a cover
which made fun of the people who were upset about having a black man as
President. To do this, they used pictorial stereotypes of Obama and Michelle.
Everyone was so horrified at the mechanism that the magazine used in order to
make its point, that the point sort of got lost in all the hysteria. In this
case, another picture was used to make a point, but this time the point was a
direct criticism of the President. Part of the hysterical response this time,
has to do with people's self interest. But part of it has to do with a belief
that no one has a right to say anything so blatantly negative about the
President because no matter who he is, we must respect the Office of the
President. So there are some issues to be dealt with. Recently, a speech was
made at a university in which the speaker, she is a woman of color who is well
known but not by me, said something to the effect that Trump is a meglomaniac,
a liar, and a criminal. Since that time, she has received death threats and has
not only removed herself from social media, but I think, has left the country.
She was making a serious speech that day in which she was honest about Trump.
One can talk about our country's history, its economic and foreign policies,
and how the Presidency is affected by those factors. But one can also look at
the man who occupies the office and make statements about him as a person and
about how his personality, his associations, and his proclivities affect the
office. Instead of doing that, instead of talking publicly about the unethical
and illegal things that he is doing each day and about his personal mental and
emotional disabilities which make him incapable of holding a leadership
position, all of the people who want to invalidate his presidency, are scraping
the bottom of the barrel for circumstantial evidence so that the public will
see him and his associates as traitors who are more loyal to Russia than to the
US. Every serious objective intelligent observer who has commented on the
Russian material, has pointed out its inconsistencies and inadequacies. But
when someone gets straight to the truth, whether in a commencement speech or a
picture posted on the web, the establishment types express horror. We live in a
time when if someone wants to speak at Berkley, and the folks on the Left
disapprove of her opinions, they think that they are correct to have her speech
cancelled. All of this stuff that is happening is not just babble. It is
important because it is a signpost on the way to an end to the semblance of
Democracy that we've had for the past 20 years.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2017 11:52 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Kathy Griffin With Trump's Severed Head Sets Off
US Denial Storm
In my opinion this is nothing but foolish babble. If Kathy Griffin wanted to
make a statement she should have held up a fishing line with dozens of little
heads of the children murdered by Donald Trump's brave attempt to demonstrate
that he truly is Emperor of the Corporate American Empire, by ordering the
Mother of All Bombs to be sent screaming into Afghanistan. But
wait!...ah...for a moment I thought I heard the shouts of angry Americans
demanding the removal of Donald Trump. But no, it was merely a sad, lonely
wind whimpering in the Hemlock Trees.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/2/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Perseus holds the head of the Medusa and Kathy Griffin holds the head
of Donald Trump. (photo: Kathy Griffin/Creative Commons)
Kathy Griffin With Trump's Severed Head Sets Off US Denial Storm
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
02 June 17
Hysteria from Donald Trump to Mitt Romney to Chelsea Clinton is Sad!
The image (above) appeared May 30, Memorial Day, and promptly set the
tut-tutters' tongues a-wagging, especially with thoughtless tweets of
condemnation. Condemnation is not a rational argument. Condemnation is
not a cogent response. Condemnation is an emotional blurt on the path
to censorship.
The saddest thing about Kathy Griffin holding Trump's bloody head
aloft like some classical regicide is that she soon fled the scene
with a groveling apology (abandoning Tyler Shields, her photographer,
in the process). This episode speaks volumes about the tortured
pathology of American culture in its present mindless form: freedom of
thought, freedom of speech are allowed, but only if you exercise them
within the walls of your invisible mental freedom prison. Otherwise
you risk being an outcast. For Kathy Griffin, that risk is
substantial, and it's all too human of her to abase herself to save
her career (if she can). The real sickness lies in the cultural demand
for that abasement, which serves as a self-righteous cover for a
deeply cowardly refusal to consider what the image means in a country
where the majority of people want this presidency decapitated and are
told they cannot talk about it except in officially approved and
restricted ways.
The official culture tries to prohibit depicting the living monster as
defeated and slain.
We need to talk about that societal unwillingness to talk about that.
The cruel, hideous ruler has long been a universal stereotype and
reality
At this point it's hard to know how much planning went into showing
Kathy Griffin like a Shakespearean avenger holding up the tyrant's
severed head (echoing the end of Macbeth), but in a short video of the shoot,
she says:
"Tyler and I are not afraid to do images that make noise. Also he
often lights me to the point where I look about fifteen. But first I'm an
artist.
But really it's good lighting." Her tone is typical Kathy Griffin
jokiness, even when she talks about having to leave the country, going
to Mexico, "we're not surviving this." Even then, prescient as it is, she's
joking.
The image first appeared on TMZ around 11 a.m. Tuesday. Unreasoned
judgment followed promptly without analysis: "sick," "sick and
offensive," "gone too far," "supports ISIS," and the like. There was
also pushback showing various right-wing images of lynching Obama. In
early afternoon, Kathy Griffin responded with two tweets. The first
said: "I caption this: there was blood coming out of his eyes, blood
coming out of his . wherever," a direct reference to Trump's verbal
assault on Megan Kelly for asking him about his misogyny. Kathy
Griffin's second tweet at 1:42 p.m. was more direct:
"OBVIOUSLY, I do not condone ANY violence by my fans or others to
anyone, ever! I'm merely mocking the Mocker in Chief."
At 4:19 p.m., Donald Trump Jr. wrote in full denial: "Disgusting but
not surprising. This is the left today. They consider this acceptable.
Imagine a conservative did this to Obama as POTUS?" This is either
ignorant or deceitful, as violent images against Obama have
proliferated from the right for years.
At 5:01 p.m., Chelsea Clinton joined the rabble with a possible point:
"This
is vile and wrong. It is never funny to joke about killing a president."
She
assumes, without supporting evidence, that the image was intended to
be funny and/or was literally about killing a president. She
apparently would rather not think about it.
At 6:14, Mitt Romney, who snottily and falsely once characterized 47%
of Americans shiftless good-for-nothings, chimed in with this cheap
shot
tweet:
"Our politics have become too base, too low, & too vulgar, but Kathy
Griffin's post descends into an even more repugnant & vile territory."
(The immediate twitter response from Elliott Lusztig is stinging and
powerful,
concluding: "you have now turned into an abject coward.")
Under withering attack, Kathy Griffin apologizes for exercising her
rights
By 8 p.m., Kathy Griffin was tweeting "I am sorry. I went too far. I
was wrong." In a video posted at the same time she retracts everything she
can:
Hey, everybody, it's me, Kathy Griffin. I sincerely apologize. I'm
just now seeing the reaction of these images. I'm a comic, I crossed
the line, I moved the line and then I crossed it. I went way too far.
The image is too disturbing, I understand how it offends people, it wasn't
funny, I get it.
I've made a lot of mistakes in my career, I will continue. I ask your
forgiveness. Taking down the image, gonna ask the photographer to take
down the image, and I beg for your forgiveness. I went too far, I made
a mistake, and I was wrong.
Forgiveness for Kathy Griffin is not happening yet. Squatty Potty
fired her as product spokesperson. Fox News reports that the Secret
Service may be checking this out as a death threat. CNN fired her as
New Year's Eve co-host (and at 10:26 p.m., New Year's co-host Anderson
Cooper piled on with a smarmy tweet: "For the record, I am appalled by
the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting
and completely inappropriate."
Almost 12 hours after Kathy Griffin's abject apology, at 7:14 a.m. May
31, Trump weighed in on twitter: "Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself.
My
children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard
time with this. Sick!" This tweet is surrounded by other presidential
tweets about Trump's Russia carelessness, health carelessness, and
climate carelessness, with no indication his children have any problem
with any of that. And the tweet comes from a man who has more reason
to be ashamed of himself than most mortals.
Perhaps the ugly feeding frenzy surrounding Kathy Griffin will not
destroy her completely, which may be the best she can hope for at this
point. It would be a pleasant surprise to hear Anderson Cooper or
anyone else say that this unjust victimization for an act of freedom
in a supposedly free country is "disgusting and completely
inappropriate." Waiting for that could take awhile, mainly because
it's true. And it's difficult. And it requires facing some brutally
awful truths about a country that too often prefers to demonize the
truthteller.
A mature culture might attempt to understand majority feeling
So here's a list of eight ways of thinking about Kathy Griffin's
severed head image that don't begin with mindless rejection. No doubt
there are more.
(A) This is a classical reference to Medusa, an epic monster with
snakes for hair. She was so horrible, merely looking at her would turn
you to stone.
When Perseus beheaded her, he became a hero. In the present version,
Trump is the monster and Kathy Griffin the would-be hero. Trump IS a
monster, with a host of monster-enablers. But Kathy Griffin has been
turned to stone, it seems.
(B) The head is not a part Trump makes much use of, so losing it does
him little harm.
(C) If this is really Trump's head, why does it have what appears to
be Kathy Griffin's hair? Is she trying to get into his head? Is this
as far as anyone can go to get into his head?
(D) If the image is true, why not have the courage of your
convictions? If it's not true, why create it? Let's assume it's a
valid, potent image. Then what do we make of the majoritarian, craven,
cultural bullying that would rather destroy an uppity woman than
search its own soul? Or even wonder if it still has a soul?
(E) Clearly the severed head of Donald Trump is an exercise in freedom
of speech. So why does anyone think it should not be allowed? That's
the opposite of freedom. That's a police state mentality.
(F) This is not an actual assassination. It's not an actual attempted
assassination. It's not even a call for assassination of or even
violence against Trump. It's a far cry from all those right-wing memes
lynching Obama. This is an example of artistic license. That's another
trait of free societies. Police states hate artistic license, even
when it's literally licensed.
(G) The image is a metaphor. It raises the question: would the United
States be better off without this particular head of state? Clearly
that's a debatable question. Clearly a majority of Americans think the
answer is yes.
No wonder the authorities and their media gatekeepers would rather
condemn the idea than talk about it. Of course any discussion quickly
arrives at the likelihood that a decapitated Trump gives us a
President Pence. Would that be better?
(H) Ask yourself this, if you can: "How is this photo worse than what
the Trumpini are doing to _____________ [fill in the blank]." How is
Kathy Griffin holding a fake head with fake blood in a photo studio
worse than Trump's vicious literal or figurative decapitation of
healthcare or Medicare or immigration justice or climate justice or
criminal justice or racial justice or pick your own real horror that
destroys innocent real people's lives in ways Kathy Griffin's photo
never could? How are the feelings of Trump's family more deserving of
compassion than the innocent civilians he dismembers by proxy in
Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and God only knows where
else?
So what should be a higher priority: Expressing distaste for a crude
image from powerless artists? Or confronting a powerful, apparently
soulless president whose human compassion is so limited he could put
the planet at risk?
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio,
TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the
Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of
America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine,
and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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