“Mrs. [Jones] is a
piggy pig pig…”
--8 year old me wrote
this on Big Sister’s homework for her teacher, Mrs. [Jones] (can’t recall her
name). I’d never met Mrs. [Jones], but I’d often heard my sister and her friends
calling the teacher this name.
So, comedienne
Kathy Griffin professionally made a video and shot some photos of her proudly
holding a mock severed head of Donald Trump. She’s apologized in a rather lame
fashion—she says she didn’t expect the reaction. Whatever…this isn’t just about
her.
Once again,
there’s a dog not barking which bothers me: this didn’t happen in a vacuum. The
photographer didn’t say “Uh, Kathy, you know holding the president’s severed
head like this is a bit creepy, and it’s not even Halloween,” and nor did
anyone else on her production crew for the video indicate that such an act of
hatred might be inappropriate in a country where half the population voted for
Trump a few months back.
It is very clear
there is a distinct hate-filled subculture that lives in a bubble, simply
unaware of the reality in this country. It wouldn’t be such a big deal, except
this hate culture is very embedded in our media. Much as my hatred of Mrs.
[Jones] as a child was an ignorant hatred borne from what I’d been told, I
can’t help but suspect, very strongly, that quite a few people hate Trump not
from any real knowledge of Trump, but merely from what they’ve been told, by a
caste of media people so filled with hate that nobody down the line in the
production of Griffin’s “comedy” noticed there was anything remotely odd about
holding a bloody effigy of Trump’s head.
I’m not exactly a
fan of Trump but I find it sad how many have been swayed by the “two minute
hate” sessions of Trump that the media creates, over and over again.
I never did
apologize to Mrs. [Jones], but in my defense I was an ignorant child, and never
did meet her (sadly, she died of cancer before I was old enough to be in her
class)—I did get in trouble for vandalizing Big Sis’s homework, of course.
What possible
defenses can Griffin and the media which have created this environment of
mindless hatred provide?
No comments:
Post a Comment