Kathy Griffin: Entertainer of the Year
11.17.2011
By William Van Meter
When famous women flaunt their relationships with gays, it can have a disingenuous aura—like a clever marketing ploy to cash in on the gay dollar. Kathy Griffin is another story entirely. “We have each other’s back,” she says.
Kathy’s affinity for our community started in school. “I was beyond a nerd,” she says. “I was that girl who went to the dance with a gay guy, but he didn’t know he was gay yet. I asked four guys to the Sadie Hawkins dance, and they all said, ‘No.’ Do you know how embarrassing that is? And then, one adorable gay man who just happened to be in Fiddler on the Roof with me said, ‘Yes.’ We’ve been friends ever since.”
Griffin takes her school experiences in stride. “I was picked on relentlessly,” she says. “The jocks and the cheerleaders gave me vocational training. You learn humor to survive. That is something I love in the gay community.” Her posse had its fringe benefits—her parents didn’t freak if she stayed out a bit late. “My mom was grateful I wasn’t going to get date-raped by sketchy drunk dudes,” Griffin says. “The worst we were going to do was light Bedazzling or flipping through fashion magazines.”
Griffin has been honored with awards from GLAAD, Lambda Legal, and The Trevor Project. She rattles off a litany of gay events—fundraisers, bear jamborees, porn awards—she’s performed at recently. If sodomites throw it, Griffin will be there. “I just performed for sober drag queens,” she says, “which is a very specific subset.”
Since her Emmy–winning reality show Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List ended, Griffin has gone back to stand-up. She’s had three specials on Bravo this year, and a fourth will air in December. Next, she wants to do a talk show. But no matter what, she’ll never forget her fans: “I read every single twat someone sends me on Twitter.”
Photographed in Los Angeles by Gavin Bond, September 28, 2011
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Kathy is a fake. She is the biggest hypocrite ever on gay issues. She appears on TV speaking out against anti-gay bullying but she has made a fortune out of bullying people on stage. Who was it who outed Clay Aitken when he was a 22 year old kid ? She didn't care about the impact it would have on his life - she just wanted to sell more tickets to make more money.
There have been numerous other people who she's outed or tried to out too. What gives her the right to interfere in someone else's personal life like this ? How can outing someone before they are ready be the action of a true supporter of the LGBT community - especially when it's done so the straight person can sell more tickets to her shows and make more money from us ?
When Kathy's friend Tracy Morgan said it was OK to "stab gay people in the belly" because they "chose to be gay" Kathy did not speak out against her Hollywood friend. She is only going to speak out for us when it's not going to harm her own career. Chris Rock spoke out to SUPPORT Tracy Morgan's anti gay comments and less than two weeks later Kathy was posing for publicity photographs with Chris Rock to promote her Broadway show. Are they the actions of a true LGBT supporter ?
Kathy's career was over once "Suddenly Susan" ended. The only people willing to pay money to see her shows were mainly gay men. She's smart so she publicly speaks out for us against easy targets like Ann Coulter and George W Bush to get us to buy tickets and make her rich but she won't speak out against her Hollywood friends who she also uses to get work.
A true supporter of the LGBT community would ALWAYS speak out against anti-gay behavior.
I wrote to Kathy on Twitter and asked her how she can say she supports us when she's outing people on stage and posing for photographs with celebrities who have said it's ok to "stab us in the belly for being gay". She declined to reply and actually blocked me so I cannot contact her again. This speaks volumes. She obviously read my message and she knows I am right - there is nothing she can say to make that kind of behavior acceptable.
There are plenty of celebs out there who do genuinely support us. Please boycott Kathy and buy tickets to see genuine gay-supporting celebs instead.
Kathy Griffin is all about making money. She will do anything to make money and she doesn't care how she does it or who she hurts in the process. She is not a friend of the gay community. She should not have received this award and gay people should boycott her shows.
Her shows and books is how she supports herself, I don't blame her for trying to support herself and be an independent woman. You are clearly just jealous because your probably broke and no one likes you, and thats why you have to hate on others that are more fortunate than you, and by the way I bet she doesn't like you either, actually no cross that I doubt she cares to even notice you.
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