Kathy Griffin made an exceedingly poor choice as a pop culture celebrity.

No child (regardless of who is their parent) should have to see their parent or an image of them murdered.

Kathy Griffin did not kill anyone (not even her audience). The joke wasn’t worth it.

Donald Trump has not killed anyone directly (yet) and does not deserve to be murdered.  No one does.

 

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that…

Kathy Griffin created a piece of fiction…poor taste, violent, bad…but a piece of fiction nonetheless. And she is contrite.

Whereas, Donald Trump is creating fact every day and he is rabidly unapologetic no matter what kind of violence it represents.

Not only has he enabled violence at his campaign rallies but he enables and has sometimes endorsed:

…violence against and traumatic separation of families

…violence targeting people through hate crimes

…violence against women and their bodies

…violence and victimization of US born citizens as “foreign” and “undesireable” for their associations

…the ongoing violence against our environment.

 

Kathy Griffin created an entirely ugly and inappropriate piece of fiction. There is no excuse for that.

Donald Trump is creating entirely ugly and inappropriate fact. There is also no excuse for that.

And who just got fired?

 

In 2002 I had the great pleasure of briefly interviewing and chatting with Kathy Griffin as part of the Los Angeles Pride Parade.  She was totally bawdy and randy and made me blush…and she was one of the most completely authentic people I’ve ever met.  Inappropriate, rude, crude, she also knew never to take herself so seriously that she couldn’t see when she was wrong.  She still has my vote.