“What started as a refusal to accept the results of a democratically held election has turned into Kathy Griffin doing her best ISIS impression on the president of our country.”
This past weekend, I took a camping trip with my dad and older brother. We sat around a camp fire drinking beers, talking politics, reminiscing, and acting like a couple of teenage boys degenerating into far lower forms of conversation. There were no kids, no wives, and no distractions—male bonding at its finest. It was everything I needed in a break from the daily grind of having to be the guy who deals with people beating, stabbing, shooting, stealing from, and lying about each other for a living. It’s the youngest I’ve seen the old man look, the most laid back I’ve seen my brother act, and the most humbled I’ve felt in years. I’m glad we did it.
I don’t get to see my old man very often anymore since I moved across the country, and I almost forgot how hilarious he can be. As a retired cop himself, he’s able to bounce back and forth between sidesplittingly entertaining stories and philosophical and profound ones before bringing it back around and making you laugh all over again. It’s the type of unique style that can only develop in a man who has put in 26 years on the job and lived to tell about it. I could go on all day about the tales told, laughs had, and lessons learned, but there’s one story in particular that is sticking out in my mind today now that the image of Kathy Griffin holding up the severed head of our president has broken the internet.
One of the main reasons Pop’s stories have so much depth and detail is because he patrolled the streets of the same city as an adult that he once called his stomping grounds as a kid. It wasn’t uncommon for some of the most ridiculous people he’d dealt with as a cop to have been his friends or schoolmates at one point in time. A shining example of this was the time my old man found himself wrapped up in a childhood acquaintance’s plot to assassinate President Reagan.
One fateful night, Joe Blow had two or ten drinks too many and sat himself down behind the wheel of a car that ultimately paved his way straight to a jail cell on a DUI. My dad, along with a few other local boys turned cops, knew Blow growing up, and their names started getting thrown around by the drunken clown as soon as he parked his butt in the drunk tank to dry out.
Drunks are pure entertainment for cops up until the point where they get in the way of us going home on time. It’s not unusual for their ranting and raving to lead to demanding things like water, trips to the restroom, phone calls, and all kinds of other earthly desires, as was the case with Blow. Eventually, the ridiculous behavior and name-dropping piqued someone’s interest enough to call Lefever and find out what he knew about this guy.
By the time Pop answered the phone in the middle of the night, his buddies are down at the precinct having a good old time laughing and joking at the expense of an individual who was obviously making a fool of himself. Instead of asking nicely for a cup of water or to use the restroom, Blow had been calling these guys every name in the book and telling them they had better do as he says. In the same way you don’t give into the demands of a child throwing a temper tantrum, the officers are giving him what he deserves—absolutely nothing. Eventually, Blow makes his big mistake when he shrieks, “Well if you don’t give me a glass of water, I’m gonna kill President Reagan!”
To this day, Pop doesn’t know who put pen to paper, but the Secret Service found out about Blow’s empty threats to assassinate the president over a glass of water that he had nothing to do with two states away. Blow’s drunken rampage went down early on in Reagan’s first term, and the prez made at least three trips to Jersey in the following eight years. Blow was put on lockdown each time for the duration of the visit. Years later, my dad had a Curb Your Enthusiasm moment with the guy at a high school reunion because Blow held him responsible for his place on a Secret Service watch list for almost a decade. You play stupid games and you win stupid prizes, they say. I’m guessing Dutch didn’t get his vote in the second term.
All joking aside, four presidents have been assassinated while holding office, and an additional fourteen have survived actual attempts or failed plots on their lives. Make no mistake about it—the threat is as grave or worse for President Trump as it has been for any president to ever sit in the Oval Office. Despite the fact that Trump’s name is not included on Wikipedia’s list of US presidential assassination attempts and plots, I’d argue that he’s facing greater danger than many of the former presidents inhabiting the list ever were.
Just look at the ever-escalating flirtation with Trump death threats made by celebrities. My earliest memory of this was Pitbull shouting to Trump, “Watch out for El Chapo, Dude!” after ripping him at the Univision Awards. A short time later, we had Eminem rapping “I don’t rap for dead presidents, I’d rather see the president dead” in his song “We as Americans.” Then, there was Snoop Dogg holding a gun to a clown depicted to be Trump and pulling the trigger in his music video for Lavender. Who can forget about Bow Wow’s Twitter rant threatening to pimp the First Lady or Sarah Silverman’s call for the US military to get rid of Trump?
While it is no secret that publicity-starved and emotionally stunted Hollywood types have a time-honored tradition of one-upmanship and grandstanding to the point of absurdity, fantasizing over Trump’s death went too far the moment they declared it in vogue. What started as a refusal to accept the results of a democratically held election has turned into Kathy Griffin doing her best ISIS impression on the president of our country. The worst part about the whole thing is that most people blamed the beheading stunt on Carrot Top. As a cop, I’m an expert witness—but I can see how many have been fooled. Therefore I’ve created this meme to show the American people that Carrot Top has been wrongfully accused.
I hate to use the word “normalize” in the same way I hate to use the word “problematic,” because both come almost exclusively out of the mouths of social justice warrior liberals who believe the guy who invented white chocolate is racist. In this case, however, I’ll go ahead and do it. The way in which the killing of President Trump is being normalized is reckless and inexcusable.
Speaking of reckless and inexcusable—lest we forget who lit the torch for the 2017 Trump Assassination Olympics just in time for the inauguration back in January, it was none other than CNN, who ran a segment captioned “Disaster Could Put Obama Cabinet Member in Oval Office.” Calling a network that muses of a newly elected president and his inner circle being murdered the Clinton News Network or Crap News Network just doesn’t suffice here. I prefer the Caliphate News Network. After all, it is CNN who has been allowing Kathy Griffin to host their coverage of New Year’s Eve in Times Square since 2013. Will they separate themselves this year, or will the 11 people tuning in be seeing the ball drop replaced with President Trump’s dismembered head falling from his body?
While the Secret Service has already opened investigations on some of the celebrities I mentioned above without going so far as to put them on a watch list, many people are calling for Kathy Griffin to be locked up. If Joe Blow can be placed on a watch list for eight years for his drunken rant against Reagan, I’m all for Griffin, Snoop, Bow Wow, Eminem, Pitbull, Silverman, and the entire CNN production team responsible for the assassination segment getting scooped up and placed under supervision anytime Trump comes to town. May he do us all a favor and come to town often.
