Look, we’ve all enjoyed poking fun at the Day-Glo dictator known as Donald Trump.
There’s the tiny hands, the orange skin, the galling disregard for anyone who’s not rich, white and male, the mind-boggling incompetence, and of course, the fact that we’ll all be wearing big furry hats and reading Tolstoy on the beach this summer.
But leave it to Kathy Griffin to go and take the whole damn thing way too far.
As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Griffin posed for a series of photos in which she beheads a Donald Trump dummy.
We mean an actual dummy; that’s not our new nickname for Sean Spicer.
On the list of Really Bad Ideas, pretending to decapitate a sitting president is right up there, just below wearing a suit of Steak-Umms into a bear cave, but above substituting sand paper for toilet paper.
Not surprisingly, the backlash against Griffin’s stunt was swift and harsh.
Trump himself tweeted that the image upset his children, particularly his youngest son, Barron.
“Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!” the president wrote.
Even friends of Griffin’s such as her CNN New Year’s Eve co-host Anderson Cooper condemned the photo, tweeting:
“For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate.”
Griffin issued an apology, and she seemed genuine in her remorse, writing, “I beg for your forgiveness. I went too far … I went way too far.”
But it may be a case of too little, too late.
The damage to her career and public reputation might well prove irreversible.
(Griffin will almost certainly be fired from her high-profile CNN gig, for starters.)
Now, it looks like there may be legal consequences for the 56-year-old comic, who is reportedly the focus of a new Secret Service investigation.
TMZ is reporting that agents are looking into “the circumstances surrounding the photo shoot,” in order to determine if anything unlawful took place.
In all likelihood, Griffin will not face any charges, but the fact that she’s the subject of a federal investigation is unlikely to do wonders for her career prospects.
All-in-all, Trump v. Griffin this is shaping up to be the ugliest, most blindlingly bright orange battle since the prop comic Carrottop locked horns with a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
What a mess that was.