Pop-Ed: Kathy Griffin Is Not a 'Bully,' but Sarah Palin Needs To Learn the Meaning of the Word

Sarah Palin is a public figure and has, with her countless TV appearances, books and reality show, become a celebrity, and by accepting the fame and money that comes with her higher profile, she opens herself up to scrutiny and parody.



Just as Palin herself is entitled to joke that First Lady Michelle Obama's seemingly benign anti-obesity campaign, with its push for new mothers to breast-feed, is a means to compensate for high milk prices and criticize 'Family Guy' for making light of Down syndrome, Kathy Griffin and the writers of 'Glee' are entitled to poke fun at Palin's politics, and Oscar-winning 'Social Network' writer Aaron Sorkin is free to call her a "witless bully" and assert that an animal shot during a hunting segment on the former Alaska governor's reality show, 'Sarah Palin's Alaska,' was "the first moose ever murdered for political gain."

None of the above is bullying because all of these people have knowingly entered an arena -- be it politics or entertainment -- that brings with it the propensity for criticism. A major facet of both politics and the arts is debating their merits, and criticism and parody are not the same thing as bullying.

Interestingly enough, during an interview late last year with Chelsea Handler, while discussing criticism Griffin received after making statements about Bristol Palin's (another public figure after her star turn on 'Dancing With The Stars') weight, Handler smartly noted, "Bullying ... is being a bully to someone who's defenseless, a poor little person who's done nothing wrong."

Griffin is no more bullying Palin by parodying her on 'Glee' than Palin is bullying Michelle Obama for, well, very frequently simply for being Michelle Obama, and any time she includes the term in her rhetoric, she minimizes it, and that is dangerous.

And, as is often the case, it seems Palin probably should have gotten her facts straight before opening her mouth. Without wanting to seem like we are rushing to the comedienne's defense, though we freely admit to being a longtime fan of Griffin, it should not go unmentioned that this particular "has-been" scored her third Grammy nomination in a row this year, had a recent New York Times best-seller with 'Official Book Club Selection,' has been nominated for six Emmys (and won two) in the past five years and this week will open a limited-engagement run of her stand-up at Broadway's Belasco Theater. She will also tape four stand-up specials for Bravo, five-year home to her now defunct reality program 'Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List,' this year alone.

Objectively, Griffin is far from a "has-been" or a "bully," and Palin's use of the term falls squarely within the rhetoric she so often employs. She routinely attempts to minimize the importance of anyone who criticizes her, turns them into the bad guy and aims to inspire sympathy for herself by making it seem like she is being unfairly picked on.

Her famous deriding of the media and many democratic politicians as "elitist" is perhaps the strongest example of this. During her now notorious 2008 interview with Katie Couric, Palin talked circles around Couric's pointed questions about economic recovery and foreign policy without really answering any of them. But when the media called her on it, she pulled the "liberal media elite" card; the media was bullying her then, too, because it was for some reason inappropriate to ask a political candidate direct questions applicable to the office she was running for and expect specific and informed answers.

She was being victimized. Questioning her appropriateness for the office of vice president was tantamount to pushing her down on the playground.

In her recent comments to FOX, Palin also mentions a statement Griffin made on CNN's New Year's Eve telecast about Willow Palin, saying, "As she had stated on CNN that her New Year's resolution was to destroy my 16-year-old daughter." Here again, Palin uses attack and victimization language to amplify what Griffin actually said -- "I've already gone for Sarah, Todd and Bristol obviously, but I think it's Willow's year to go down."

Bullying has been a hot topic for the last several months following the suicides of several bullied gay teens. These teens were emotionally tortured and in many cases physically abused because of who they were, and every time Palin uses bullying language to describe media criticism of herself, she further displays her ignorance to the impact of real emotional abuse and the psychological distress caused by bullying.

Maybe if Palin conducted herself like a real politician and used her national platform to present solutions to the problems facing the United States, offering specifics on how to create more jobs and lower the deficit, instead of taking to the airwaves to issue snarky comments about comediennes and others who disagree with her political ideology, the big bad media would stop "bullying" her and listen to what she has to say for a change.

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