It shouldn’t be too hard to say it’s wrong for people to call the U.S. president’s daughter heinous names.
But here we are in June 2018 — when Hollywood leftists are uniting around the faux cause that is late-night host’s Samantha Bee’s “right to say it.”
The latest episode in this ongoing charade is the re-emergence of Jon Stewart, the former host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” who has a knack for restating the default liberal position in unorthodox ways.
“They don’t give a s*** about the word ‘c***.’ That is probably — he [Trump] says that instead of ‘please,’ I’m guessing,” Stewart recently said at a Q&A forum at Clusterfest, according to The Daily Beast.
“Please understand that a lot of what the Right does, and it’s maybe their greatest genius, is they’ve created a code of conduct that they police, that they themselves don’t have to, in any way, abide,” Stewart continued.
It remains a bit of a mystery who exactly in the conservative media, or on late-night television, ever called Chelsea Clinton or any other presidential child such a horrible slur without repercussion.
NBC correspondent David Shuster in 2008 was even suspended for making an inappropriate euphemism about then 27-year-old Chelsea Clinton’s involvement in the Clinton campaign.
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Stewart’s “he did it, too!” finger-pointing entirely misses the ethical question of whether it’s right or wrong for Bee to refer to a public figure by using the vulgar C-word.
Bee, who got her own TBS show “Full Frontal” in 2016 after serving as a correspondent for years on “The Daily Show,” has received a ton of support from prominent entertainers after her remark. Director Joss Whedon, for instance, said Bee was being “too kind” in calling Ivanka what she called her.
Oscar-winning actress Sally Fields also found a way of dismissing the severity of Bee’s comment. “I like Samantha Bee a lot, but she is flat wrong to call Ivanka a c***. C***s are powerful, beautiful, nurturing and honest,” Fields wrote.
And “Good Will Hunting” star Minnie Driver attempted to put a “humorous” twist on Bee’s egregious insult. “That was the wrong word for Samantha Bee to have used,” Driver wrote on Twitter. “But mostly because (to paraphrase the French) Ivanka has neither the warmth nor the depth.”
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Bee acknowledged (begrudgingly) that what she said on the air was wrong. She issued a public apology, even though she went the Kathy Griffin route and demolished any illusion of remorse at a closed-door awards ceremony only days later.
Clearly comedians, actors and other entertainers want to preserve their right to creative expression. That isn’t at stake here. What people are objecting to is a smear campaign dressed up as “comedy.”
There’s nothing “comedic” about using a vile term for a member of the president’s family.
Except that there’s nothing “comedic” about using a vile term for a member of the president’s family. It only takes a moment of empathy to realize that a late-night comic’s reference to someone’s wife or daughter with such a disgusting epithet isn’t just in bad taste — it’s immoral and unacceptable.
Kyle Becker is a content writer and producer with LifeZette. Follow him on Twitter.
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