Advocate of the Year Kathy Griffin mixed comedy and a call to action in her speech to the Out100 party Friday night — including a dig at the White House occupant’s genitalia.
She an enthusiastic introduction and an a cappella serenade by Sia, who called Griffin “unfiltered, unapologetic and uncanceled and uncancelable.”
“Proving that authenticity and allyship never go out of style, she reminds us that comedy can be protests, truth can be funny, and resilience can be fabulous,” the singer added, then gave an a cappella serenade to Griffin.
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Griffin laughed as she began speaking. “I’m just laughing at the fact that Niecy [Nash-Betts, the Out100 Icon of the Year] can't be here because she's working in Atlanta, but you know me, I'll fucking show up to the opening of an envelope,” Griffin said. “So I am thrilled to be here.”
“First of all, we’ve got to have fun because this is, these are tough times,” she continued. Then, after asking if she could be “really inappropriate,” she said, “OK, so let's be honest, the real reason I'm getting this award is what I'm called in my day, there was a term called fag hag. And we won't say the F-A-G word anymore, but honey, I'm an OG hag. I know all of you. We go back, we have a relationship.
“I know who's the top and who's the bottom. I know which lesbian flips Silver Lake herself in one day. I know the bears from the otters. I know who likes to go to the Black Party and the White Party.”
“But I'm so honored to be Advocate of the Year because we are a community and this is a tough time,” she went on. So I wanna tell you to please become as politically engaged as you can. Please, it's because I worry about you guys and I worry about an America where it may not even be safe to walk down the street as a gay person. And I worry about Trump being so crazy and so wracked with dementia with his little tiny mushroom penis that's this big.
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“And I worry about him trying to enact something where if a neighbor thinks you're gay, they can like call you in and stuff like that. So please remember, elections are not every four years or every two years. Elections are every single year, and we just passed Prop. 50 here in California,” she said, referring to the redistricting measure. It “could not have happened without the gay vote,” she added.
“And so what I admire so much about the community is you mobilize, you organize like nobody, you let the lesbians build, you let the gay boys decorate. And goddamn it, there's hope in the world because of that. So please stick together, united we stand, divided we fall. I love you guys.”
