Kathy Griffin "suspended permanently" from Twitter

So among the latest wokies to be cancelled by Twitter, we have Kathy Griffin. Remember her?

It's so unfortunate that Griffin turned out to be yet another wokie with Trump Derangement Syndrome. I've actually enjoyed her stand-up routines, which are primarily focused on taking down her fellow celebrities by several pegs. Have you ever heard Griffin going after Oprah? Brutal stuff. Griffin has been merciless in bringing down Hollywood stars who take themselves too seriously, and to that extent, you could say I even sided with her because, in my eyes, she was performing a public service.

Then came the effigy affair. When Griffin pulled her Trump-beheaded-in-effigy stunt, I wasn't one of the touchy morons who took her gesture seriously, as if this were, in fact, some sort of ISIS-style gesture implying that she really wanted to see Trump bloodily murdered. I understood that Griffin was engaging in dark humor, letting her feelings for Trump be known in an exaggerated way. Do I think Griffin wanted to murder Trump or incite murder? No, not at all. Think about the countless political figures who have been burned in effigy. How many of those figures were later killed? (No—I really want to know, but at a guess, most of them survived an effigy-burning, even if some were killed later for other reasons.) So I affirmed Griffin's free-speech right to do what she did. I didn't agree with her sentiment, but I thought she had a right to express herself. If you want to get into a pissing contest about how Democrats went nuts after Sarah Palin's "crosshairs" picture supposedly led directly to the shooting of Gabby Giffords, go right ahead. If you believe that Palin had a right to promote the "crosshairs" image, though, then you ought to affirm Kathy Griffin's right to do what she did.

But Griffin turned into a pit bull when it came to Trump, attacking him relentlessly, then turning her attention to Elon Musk, who has taken over Twitter and begun a sweeping change in censorship policy as a way to promote freer speech on the platform. This was a huge mistake on Griffin's part. Her most recent tactic has been to rename her account "Elon Musk," and in doing so, she apparently violated a policy that was put into place at the start of the Musk era: thou shalt not impersonate anyone else. Since Twitter is a morass full of bad actors, I have no idea what purpose such a lame policy might even serve, especially since even a cursory glance at a parody account ought to reveal, pretty quickly, whether the account is bogus. I haven't done any research about this, but I'd bet that this policy has gone largely unenforced. Now, however, Griffin decided to attack the big dog, and in doing so, she met a pit bull hundreds of times bigger—and richer—than she is, and her Twitter account got, as the kids say, yeeted.

Should Griffin have been canceled? I think she should have been warned* and told to identify her renamed account as a parody (although that move, too, would ruin the joke). Instead, she was suspended outright—or, in the contradictory language that was put out, she was "permanently suspended" (the term suspension usually implies temporariness; perhaps "indefinitely suspended" would have been better language). Some will perceive Griffin's cancelation as a blow against free speech and therefore ironic and hypocritical. Others will point out the irony of free-speech complaints coming from the left after their years-long censorious reign on Twitter—how's it feel to be CANCELED, bitches? But even though I think Griffin's cancelation may have been a step too far, I can't help feeling some Schadenfreude about her situation. Overall, I'm not going to lose any sleep over whether Griffin is on the platform or not; I left Twitter in 2016 and have no plans to return.

And in the end, the news about Kathy Griffin isn't going to move any needles. Conservatives who hate her will go on hating her. Lefties who love her will go on loving her. Nothing will change. So how significant is the news? Not very, I'd say: we're talking about one loudmouthed comedian's pain, and since Griffin has millions of fans, it's assured that she'll find her way onto some platform and regain her voice. And if, as many contend, Twitter is but a tiny bubble universe with far less importance than the Twitterati think it has, how is any of this consequential? I'm not even sure how many Zoomers even know who Kathy Griffin is.

One thing is certain: this is far from over, but you know what? I don't care.

__________

*Musk's new policy apparently specifies no warning.