A few years back, the Media Research Center had a major meltdown over Kathy Griffin’s mockup of Donald Trump’s severed head — but was almost completely silent about right-wing Republican Paul Gosar releasing an edited anime clip depicting him murdering Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Well, Griffin is looking to make a comeback after the fallout from that photo, and the MRC is descending into meltdown mode once again.
In a Jan. 12 video, Bozell referenced the situation while raging against journalists purportedly joking about killing Donald Trump:
The MRC president asked how the media would react if a conservative comedian held up a bloody fake head of Joe Biden, as Kathy Griffin did with Donald Trump in the summer of 2017. At around the same time, a Shakespeare theatre company produced a modernized version of the play Julius Caesar, with Trump playing the leader who was stabbed to death. Liberals praised these things.
Bozell made sure not to mention a 2012 staging of “Julius Caesar” that used an Obama-esque figure as the main character, let alone condemn it.
Brad Wilmouth complained in a March 11 post:
On Saturday night, MSNBC host Ayman Moheyldin did his part to help resuscitate the career of liberal provocateur Kathy Griffin as he had the comedian on his show to promote her upcoming appearances and explain why she does not regret the infamous image of her from 2017 looking like she had decapitated President Donald Trump.
After playing a clip of Griffin on stage joking about how she was exonerated after speaking with Secret Service agents about her Trump photo, Moheyldin laughed and downplayed the incident as he set up the nine-minute segment:
[…]Not bothering to show the actual image of Griffin holding what appeared to be Trump’s bloody head, Mohyeldin promoting her latest “comedy” tour as he added: “For the first time in six years, Kathy is back on the road for her ‘My Life on the PTSD’ tour. She’s putting the Trump drama behind her to make you laugh about a whole new host of dramas both personal and not.”
Wilmouth further complained that guest Katie Phang “stretched by suggesting that Griffin’s suggestion of the violent decapitation of President Trump was similar to Trump encouraging his supporters to engage in political protest at the Capitol.” Of course, he failed to reference the Gosar video.
Nicholas Fondacaro ranted as part of his March 26 hate-watching of “The View,” complaining that she hadn’t suffered enough for violating right-wing sensibilities:
Revisionist history and hypocrisy were once again the theme of ABC’s The View, on Tuesday. So-called “comedian” Kathy Griffin was one of the special guests, there to pitch her new “comedy” tour, and she defended her infamous picture of her holding up an effigy of then-President Trump’s bloody severed head. She got raucous support from the Cackling Coven for how she was not “afraid to take on powerful men” in that way.
“This is your first tour in six years,” moderator Whoopi Goldberg falsely declared. “Six years I was out of work because of that ! There, I said what it was!” Griffin cursed and lied.
In reality, the supposed harm to her career was either all in her broken head or part of the false narrative she was using to get sympathy and lefties to turn out to her shows. As NewsBusters reported by in August 2019, People magazine did a puff piece on Griffin, boasting about how she was “still standing” after the blowup. They noted Griffin had booked shows in 15 countries “from Iceland to Australia” including shows in Carnegie Hall and Radio City.
Her IMDB page also shows she was credited with works throughout Trump’s presidency and Biden’s. There’s the obvious dropoff during the pandemic when production of many shows was put on hold and live shows really weren’t happening.
She went on to defend her so-called ‘joke’ about killing Trump: “All about a picture! A picture I took making fun of the president, which you’re supposed to do as a comic!” “They made you pay,” co-host Joy Behar lamented.
Griffin has never adequately explained what the punchline of the picture was and she didn’t seem to like it when she was at the butt of that joke.
When the hosts pointed out right-wing hypocrisy over another image of political violence, Fondacaro screeched in an April 2 post:
In their first live show after the Easter weekend, the leftist extremists of ABC’s The View kicked off their Tuesday show enraged that former President Trump reposted a “violent image” of a truck decal featuring a fake image of President Biden alive and hog-tied in the bed. But in the midst of their pearl-clutching, the cast defended their friend Kathy Griffin’s photoshoot holding up an effigy of Trump’s bloody severed head; suggesting she simply “did what she does as a comic.”
“You-know-who spent the most sacred weekend on the Catholic calendar posting rants about the judge in his New York fraud case making false claims about the judge’s daughter and reposting a violent image of President Biden that we are not going to show you here today,” moderator Whoopi Goldberg indignantly proclaimed.She demanded to know: “Why does he keep getting away with it?” She called the truck decal “so violent” and asked: “What’s the difference between what Kathy Griffin did and what he did? I don’t understand.”
Despite his purported revulsion over Griffin’s Trump image, Fondacaro refused to criticize the tied-up Biden image — instead playing a lot of whataboutism — and he censored in both posts any reference to Gosar’s violent video. Apparently, he believes some images of political violence are above criticism since the targets are the MRC’s enemies.