Take her to task.

#1: Griffin should be held to the same standards as everyone else.

Performers from both sides of the political spectrum are routinely fired for offending audiences. Conservative commentator and Trump fanboy, Milos Yiannopoulos lost a book deal following comments which appeared to condone pedophilia. Like Griffin, Yiannopoulos also said he had only been joking. Similarly, Liberal commentator and comedian Bill Maher was fired from his ABC show after suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were deserved. Griffin herself is aware of this well-established norm. She even bragged about being let go from E! No matter how bright your celebrity, businesses and the public will distance themselves from those who cause needless offense.

#2: Griffin’s stunt is a ploy for attention.

Posing as a Hollywood outsider is Griffin’s bread and butter. Her Bravo show “My Life on the D-List” is based on this premise, and Kathy regularly boasts about being banned from some of television’s biggest talk shows, like Ellen and The View, ostensibly for being too shocking. Griffin has learned to treat shock like currency; her picture and her overblown reaction to the criticism it drew reveals the cynicism of the stunt. Griffin’s claims that the Trump family is trying to ruin her life are suspect when evaluated against the president’s actual response, which was mild in comparison to comments he’s made about other entertainers who’ve criticized him (see O’Donnell, Rosie). Stray tweets and the firings that would inevitably follow any such broad offense hardly merit a press conference, unless one is desperately trying to remain in the public eye.

#3: Griffin is being hypocritical.

How does one who’s built a career on bullying others expect the public to answer calls to defend her against the same behavior that made her rich and famous? Arguably, her off-the-cuff, tell-it-like-it-is style is remarkably similar to that of one real-estate-mogul-turned-entertainer-turned-president, but Griffin would like his offenses prosecuted and hers to be forgiven. Griffin’s bloodied Trump mask was hardly her first jab at Trump or the first family. She joked that she would give both Trump and his youngest son, Barron, a beat down. While Griffin certainly has the right to make inappropriate jests, the public, and indeed, the targets of her jokes, have the right to reject those comments, along with the person who made them.

Give Griffin a pass.

#1: Griffin was doing her job.

More than providing comic relief from the daily pressures of life, comedy is an important tool through which people evaluate society and its power systems. For Griffin, checking the powerful through mockery is a professional obligation. Griffin elaborated on her view of comedians’ sacred right to push boundaries in a December 2016 interview, when she proclaimed that comedy in the age of Trump needs to “go for all the absurdities.” These views both foreshadow and inform the picture that would later spark so much controversy. In the midst of the backlash, Griffin’s lawyer explained that the picture was a parody of sexist remarks Trump had made, “taken to an absurdist visual.” In this context, Griffin’s action reflects consistency in her idea of the role of comics in society – to use absurdity to point out the absurd.

#2: Trump has been given a pass for the same behaviors.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, then candidate Trump received an outpouring of criticism following his “Second Amendment People” joke, in which he suggested supporters of the Second Amendment “do something” to ensure their rights to bear arms. His comments were widely understood to mean that he would like to see gun-lovers use their weapons against his opponent, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton; the media and the public alike were justifiably outraged. Trump denied there was any suggestion of violence in his comments, just as Griffin insists there was no intent to threaten Trump with her photograph. If Trump got a pass from the American people, after appearing to encourage violence, so should Griffin.

#3: It’s just an effigy.

Effigies are as old as politics itself. Citizens across the world regularly abuse renderings of politicians as an act of political dissent. Barak Obama was burned in effigy (among other things), as was George W. Bush. Bill Clinton was burned in effigy as recently as 2015 (14 years after his presidency!) in New Dehli. And so on and so on, back to George Washington and even King George III. As history’s leaders have shown, being burned in effigy is nothing to get heated about – it’s part and parcel of the way the global body politic communicates with its leaders. As such, Kathy Griffins’ bloodied rubber mask didn’t unearth any new ground, and needn’t raise any eyebrows.