Last night Samantha Bee took on the Greg Gianforte body slam against a reporter, and how that behavior was rewarded by voters.
Threats against journalists have gotten so bad that NPR has started giving its reporters hostile-environment awareness training. You can hear about it on their new show, "Wait, Wait, Don't Kill Me."
And Samantha Bee points out what no one else has: the latest testosterone eruption among Republicans didn't originate with "Trump culture."
Did he provide a focus for roid-rage culture? Sure. He rode into office on a wave of assholes like a crowd surfer at a Kid Rock concert. But there has always been an undercurrent of testosterone-fueled cruelty in America, a nation where there was no greater demonstration of strength than hitting a brown person in the face with your rock-hard boner.
The triumphant impunity of Gamergate trolls, the Bundy occupiers, and George Zimmerman told America's shy bullies: "It's OK. You are accepted. Be yourself. We won't judge you.
Neither will a judge."
Watching the number of Republicans excusing Gianforte for making "a mistake," I wondered why Kathy Griffin doesn't get the same dispensation. Maybe one "it was just a joke" for Griffin for every seventy-five times Ann Coulter has said the same thing?
