Billy Bush dubs getting fired for laughing along to Trump's misogynistic bullshit "the ultimate degradation"
Suggesting a less encyclopedic knowledge of the concept of degradation than one might initially assume, Billy Bush gave an interview this week in which he stated that getting fired from a breezy morning news show
over his “locker room talk” with Donald Trump was “the ultimate degradation.”
Admittedly, Bush—talking to People, and mostly seeming contrite about the “bystander abuse” he propagated by laughing along as Trump talked about moving on women “like a bitch” and ogling actress Arianne Zucker—was only talking about the ultimate degradation “for a man.” (We don’t want to spend a lot of time dwelling on the grim topic of the ultimate degradation for women, but it presumably starts with a man getting elected president after gleefully expressing his ability to grab women by the genitals, consequence-free, and then just gets worse from there.)
“I was ashamed and embarrassed,” Bush continued, adding, “And then I went through stages of grieving because I lost my career.” (Bush was swiftly fired from his spot on the Today show in the aftermath of the Access Hollywood tapes getting loose.) In the meantime, this feels like an apt moment to revisit the old, apocryphal Margaret Atwood quote about how men are afraid women will laugh at them, and women are afraid men will kill them. Except nobody ever even laughed at Billy Bush; we all just went “Ugh,” and quietly hoped he’d disappear.