Kathy Griffin is sorry.
Like, really, really, REALLY ridiculously sorry.
The comedian came under fire from both sides of the aisle on Tuesday after she posted for a Tyler Shields photo shoot in which she held the bloody, severed head of President Donald Trump.
In a horrible attempt at humor, Griffin wrote “there was blood coming out of his eyes, blood coming out of his…wherever,” as a caption, hearkening back to when Trump made the same comment last year about Megyn Kelly.
It was a sexist, inappropriate thing for Trump to utter at the time.
And, in the context below, it was a wildly inappropriate and borderline illegal thing for Griffin to say now.
Watch the controversial video and share your opinion on it in the Comments section at the bottom of this post:
Shortly after the fake beheading went viral, Griffin started to backtrack on the meaning behind it.
“OBVIOUSLY, I do not condone ANY violence by my fans or others to anyone, ever! I’m merely mocking the Mocker in Chief,” she Tweeted.
Shields, the photographer behind the shoot, was more defiant in his defense of the pairing’s so-called “art” work.
“Can you go to jail for making an artistic statement??? Asking for a friend… @kathygriffin,” he wrote.
No, not really.
But you can go to jail for threatening the life of a sitting President.
It’s unlikely that the Secret Service will actually investigate Griffin and/or that any charges will get brought against Griffin.
But she has heard it from Republicans and Democrats alike in the wake of this distasteful stunt.
“Disgusting but not surprising. This is the left today,” wrote Donald Trump Jr., turning this into a partisan issue and adding:
“They consider this acceptable. Imagine a conservative did this to Obama as POTUS?”
Of course, this has proven to be wholly untrue.
No one on the Left considers this acceptable.
Griffin is almost receiving more flak from Liberals than from Conservatives because this distorts their rhetoric against Trump.
There is plenty (and we mean PLENTY) one can say as a critique of Donald Trump without resorting to such acts of fake violence.
“It wasn’t right when peoplel hung lynched Obama effigies, just as what Kathy Griffin did isn’t right now,” wrote Debra Messing, Chelsea Clinton also disproved Trump Jr.’s thesis, Tweeting:
“This is vile and wrong. It is never funny to joke about killing a president.”
Other negative reactions have included:
If Griffin was seeking attention and looking for a way to unify members of both political parties, she has succeeded on both fronts.
In light of this never-ending backlash, however, Griffin recorded a 30-second video this evening and shared it on Twitter.
“I beg for your forgiveness,” Griffin is here to say. “I went too far.”
She goes on to say she’ll see if Shields will remove the video in question and all of the photos.
As far as apologies go, it doesn’t get much more forthright than this:
But it doesn’t stop us from asking:
What the heck were you thinking in the first place, Kathy Griffin?!?!?
Seriously.