Slate came in for withering criticism on Monday after publishing an article going after former President George H.W. Bush’s service dog, Sully. The Labrador had been at Bush’s side in his final months and has taken the internet by storm after a photo of him lying by Bush’s casket went viral on Monday.
The 94-year-old Bush died on Friday after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
The basic thrust of the Slate piece by Ruth Graham was that as a service dog, Sully was just an “employee” of the Bush family and that we broadly shouldn’t anthropomorphize animals.
“Sully is not a longtime Bush family pet, letting go of the only master he has known. He is an employee who served for less than six months,” said Graham. “It’s a bit demented to project soul-wrenching grief onto a dog’s decision to lie down in front of a casket. Is Sully ‘heroic’ for learning to obey the human beings who taught him to perform certain tasks?”
Graham defiantly stood by the piece, tweeting out a number of hateful messages she had received from the aggrieved online community.
“Waking up to many beautiful notes from my fans, America’s most online dog people,” she said. “One thing is for sure, this is a normal amount of emotional investment in the question of whether a single photograph of a dog you’ve never met depicts the dog in a state of mourning.”
In an additional comment to TheWrap, Graham added that contrary to a growing consensus online, she was not a cat person.
The article, nevertheless, seemed tailor-made to feed the Twitter outrage machine, which did not disappoint.
“This might be the most perfect tweet to end Twitter on, forever. Shut it down. Now,” said Fox News host Greg Gutfeld.
“Are you serious with this crap?” added DailyWire editor Ashe Schow. “You just have to s– all over the touching story of a service dog standing by his human.”
Happy Birthday, Robert De Niro: Here Are His 10 Harshest Trump Insults (Photos)
Robert De Niro turns 75 today. The celebrated actor has won two Oscars and several other honors. But today, we aren't celebrating his acting; we're celebrating his history staunch disdain for President Donald Trump. Here is a timeline of De Niro's Trump insults, dating back to 2011.
In April 2011, De Niro spoke with NBC's Brian Williams in an interview at the Tribeca Film Festival. This was at the very beginning of Trump's political career, when he was championing the "birther" movement against President Barack Obama.
"I won’t mention any of the certain people on the news in the last couple weeks," De Niro told Williams. "But what are we doing? This is crazy. They’re making statements about people that they don’t even back up. Go get the facts before you start saying things about people."
Though De Niro danced around saying Trump's name explicitly, it's clear from the interview who he was talking about.
"You think you’ve got it bad, [LGBT] community? I don’t think you know what it’s like to be really discriminated against," De Niro joked while accepting an award for Excellence in Media. "I recently turned on the television news and saw this odd guy with little hands, and he was, like, raving. Turns out the ones being discriminated against are straight, middle-aged white men."
GLAAD
During the summer of the 2016 presidential campaign, the revered actor again weighed in on Trump at the 22nd Sarajevo Film Festival, where he was receiving a lifetime achievement award.
"I don’t know, it’s crazy that people like Donald Trump... He shouldn’t even be where he is, so God help us," said De Niro
"I think people now are starting to really push back. The media, they’ve given him all this attention and finally they’re starting to say, ‘Come on, Donald. This is ridiculous. This is nuts. This is insane,’" De Niro said. "Cause what he’s been saying is really, totally crazy, ridiculous stuff…he’s totally nuts."
"He’s so blatantly stupid," he said. "He’s an embarrassment to this country... He talks how he’d like to punch people in the face? Well, I’d like to punch him in the face. This is somebody that we want for president? I don’t think so."
Vote Your Future
After the 2016 presidential election, De Niro was angry and shocked -- along with much of America -- that Trump beat democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Last January, De Niro spoke at an anti-Trump rally outside of Trump Tower in New York. "I’m very happy to be here tonight with all of you and all of my overrated friends," De Niro said, referencing Trump's tweet that Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep is "overrated."
De Niro went on to make fun of Trump's tweeting with a series of imagined Trump tweets: "First: ‘De Niro’s career is a disaster. He was passed over for Godfather 4 and Magnificent Seven. Pathetic!'"
De Niro went on to say "[Trump is] a bad example of this country, this city."
"I said that because he said that about somebody, that he would like to punch them in the face," he said. "How dare he say that to the crowd? How dare he say the things he does? Of course I want to punch him in the face … It was only a symbolic thing, anyway. It wasn’t like I was going to go find him and punch him in the face. But he’s got to hear it. He’s got to hear that, you know, that's how he makes people feel."
ABC
Last May, De Niro called Trump's America a "tragic, dumbass comedy" during a visit to Brown University.
And during his acceptance speech at the Film Society of Lincoln Center for the annual Chaplin Award, De Niro called out the Trump administration for its position towards art and other policies.
"The administration’s mean-spiritedness towards art and entertainment is an expression of their mean-spirited attitude about people who want that art and entertainment," he said. "People also want and deserve decent wages, a fair tax system, a safe environment, education for their children, and healthcare for all."
WPRI
At this year's Tony Awards, De Niro used his platform on stage to criticize Trump -- and drop plenty of F-bombs in the process.
"It’s no longer ‘Down With Trump,’ it’s ‘F— Trump," he said. He also referred to the president as “the jerkoff-in-chief” who “has put the press under siege.”
CBS had to later release a statement saying his explicit language was "unexpected."
Getty
Just a few days later, De Niro apologized to Canada's prime minister Justin Trudeau for Trump's "idiotic behavior," calling it "a disgrace."
The apology came after the G7 summit in Quebec, which happened days before Trump's historic summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Singapore. The president widely treated the meeting with traditional allies as an afterthought, arriving late to sessions and leaving them early. Disagreements with Trudeau sparked a Twitter tirade from Trump as the summit concluded.
Getty Images
All of De Niro's statements about Trump finally made their way to the White House after the actor's Tony Awards speech got a response from the president.
“I watched him last night and truly believe he may be ‘punch-drunk,'” Trump tweeted. “I guess he doesn’t……realize the economy is the best it’s ever been with employment being at an all time high, and many companies pouring back into our country. Wake up Punchy!,” POTUS went on say in a separate tweet.
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The celebrated Oscar winner turns 75 today
Robert De Niro turns 75 today. The celebrated actor has won two Oscars and several other honors. But today, we aren't celebrating his acting; we're celebrating his history staunch disdain for President Donald Trump. Here is a timeline of De Niro's Trump insults, dating back to 2011.