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| 'I do really care. Do U?': Kathy Griffin returns to US stage to take on Trump | 'I do really care. Do U?': Kathy Griffin returns to US stage to take on Trump |
| (21 days later) | |
| If there were such a thing as the perfect marriage of standup comic to sitting president, it might look like Kathy Griffin and Donald Trump. For all their differences – political, if not rhetorical – the two are uniquely suited to both the zeitgeist and one another, like Dick Cavett and Richard Nixon refurbished for the era of reality TV presidencies and self-promotion. It makes sense, then, that as the former Apprentice host ditched television for DC, the woman known for Kardashian-centric humor and televised pap smears has come along to torment him. | If there were such a thing as the perfect marriage of standup comic to sitting president, it might look like Kathy Griffin and Donald Trump. For all their differences – political, if not rhetorical – the two are uniquely suited to both the zeitgeist and one another, like Dick Cavett and Richard Nixon refurbished for the era of reality TV presidencies and self-promotion. It makes sense, then, that as the former Apprentice host ditched television for DC, the woman known for Kardashian-centric humor and televised pap smears has come along to torment him. |
| Kathy Griffin: 'Trump went for me because I was an easy target' | Kathy Griffin: 'Trump went for me because I was an easy target' |
| At Radio City Music Hall on Monday night, where Griffin performed the first of two New York shows on her Laugh Your Head Off tour, the 57-year-old gave a blistering and at times profound clinic in standup comedy, entertaining an audience of primarily women and gay men for three hours with nary a break for water. The centerpiece, as anyone who’s watched Griffin make the talkshow rounds in the last 12 months can attest, was her experience on the receiving end of attacks from a briskly mobilized, Trump-sanctioned army of far-right trolls and secret servicemen – a story that would seem exhaustively woe-is-me were it not the clearest example yet of the lengths the president will go to squash his critics and free speech. To hear her tell it: “The president and the government said I was never going to perform again.” | At Radio City Music Hall on Monday night, where Griffin performed the first of two New York shows on her Laugh Your Head Off tour, the 57-year-old gave a blistering and at times profound clinic in standup comedy, entertaining an audience of primarily women and gay men for three hours with nary a break for water. The centerpiece, as anyone who’s watched Griffin make the talkshow rounds in the last 12 months can attest, was her experience on the receiving end of attacks from a briskly mobilized, Trump-sanctioned army of far-right trolls and secret servicemen – a story that would seem exhaustively woe-is-me were it not the clearest example yet of the lengths the president will go to squash his critics and free speech. To hear her tell it: “The president and the government said I was never going to perform again.” |
| Griffin, of course, was photographed last year holding a synthetic Trump mask smothered in fake blood. Though innocuous compared to the alleged crimes of, say, Harvey Weinstein, who was allowed to furtively abscond to a luxury spa in Arizona, Griffin found herself a Hollywood fugitive: jobless, roundly condemned by the left and the right, on the no-fly list, under investigation by the federal government for “conspiracy to assassinate the president”, and dropped by Squatty Potty, the toilet stool with whom she had an endorsement deal. | Griffin, of course, was photographed last year holding a synthetic Trump mask smothered in fake blood. Though innocuous compared to the alleged crimes of, say, Harvey Weinstein, who was allowed to furtively abscond to a luxury spa in Arizona, Griffin found herself a Hollywood fugitive: jobless, roundly condemned by the left and the right, on the no-fly list, under investigation by the federal government for “conspiracy to assassinate the president”, and dropped by Squatty Potty, the toilet stool with whom she had an endorsement deal. |
| She also lost close friendships, like with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, and received unsolicited advice from peers such as Billy Bush, who suggested she try meditation, and Melanie Griffith, who told Griffin to “do Mike Pence next”. Most cynically, though, she became a useful political cog in Trump’s attempts to paint the left as uncivil and un-American. “Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself,” he wrote on Twitter, signing off with a characteristic “Sick!” | She also lost close friendships, like with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, and received unsolicited advice from peers such as Billy Bush, who suggested she try meditation, and Melanie Griffith, who told Griffin to “do Mike Pence next”. Most cynically, though, she became a useful political cog in Trump’s attempts to paint the left as uncivil and un-American. “Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself,” he wrote on Twitter, signing off with a characteristic “Sick!” |
| I played Radio City Music Hall for the first time tonight...a bucket list moment for me. I am so grateful for all the love and support! Thank you! pic.twitter.com/ywBtquplwB | I played Radio City Music Hall for the first time tonight...a bucket list moment for me. I am so grateful for all the love and support! Thank you! pic.twitter.com/ywBtquplwB |
| But despite her whirlwind year, Griffin’s redemption tour is tailor-made for Trump’s America, where the lifespan of any given controversy is hardly a week. So, about as quickly as she was exiled, Griffin is back with gale force. And as she said on Monday night, wearing the same blue “pussy bow” dress she donned in the Trump photo: “I never learn my lesson.” | But despite her whirlwind year, Griffin’s redemption tour is tailor-made for Trump’s America, where the lifespan of any given controversy is hardly a week. So, about as quickly as she was exiled, Griffin is back with gale force. And as she said on Monday night, wearing the same blue “pussy bow” dress she donned in the Trump photo: “I never learn my lesson.” |
| It’ll come as no surprise to Griffin’s fans that the comic is as proficient skewering Trump and his accomplices (“Fuckabee”, “Melanie”, “Feckless” and “Eddie Munster”) as she is Lindsay Lohan, Sarah Palin and Miley Cyrus, three frequent targets of her irreverent, mud-slinging brand of standup. Celebrity gossip is still a fountainhead of material for Griffin – at Radio City, she dished on the Kardashian-Wests, her BFF Cher and Martha Stewart – but the severed head imbroglio has clearly been a call-to-arms, not to mention the inspiration for the show’s cheeky title. Sauntering on to the stage in a version of Melania Trump’s “I really don’t care” jacket (this one said “I do really care”), Griffin seemed thrilled to be performing just a couple blocks south of Trump’s midtown Manhattan tower to explain how her career was temporarily torpedoed because of an ill-conceived photo op. | It’ll come as no surprise to Griffin’s fans that the comic is as proficient skewering Trump and his accomplices (“Fuckabee”, “Melanie”, “Feckless” and “Eddie Munster”) as she is Lindsay Lohan, Sarah Palin and Miley Cyrus, three frequent targets of her irreverent, mud-slinging brand of standup. Celebrity gossip is still a fountainhead of material for Griffin – at Radio City, she dished on the Kardashian-Wests, her BFF Cher and Martha Stewart – but the severed head imbroglio has clearly been a call-to-arms, not to mention the inspiration for the show’s cheeky title. Sauntering on to the stage in a version of Melania Trump’s “I really don’t care” jacket (this one said “I do really care”), Griffin seemed thrilled to be performing just a couple blocks south of Trump’s midtown Manhattan tower to explain how her career was temporarily torpedoed because of an ill-conceived photo op. |
| It’s a remarkable story of being put through what Griffin calls the “Trump wood-chipper”, an apparatus of outrage stretching from bot farms in Macedonia to interrogation rooms in strange airports. So remarkable, in fact, that the famously unflappable Griffin got sidetracked several times on the night remembering yet another part of the story, detours she’d introduce by saying: “Wait, get this shit!” There was a sense in the room, as Griffin moved restlessly between frivolous Tinseltown gossip and caustic political analysis, that we were watching not only a defining moment in Trump-era standup but a referendum on the idea of going high when they go low. “I am the mayor of Zero Fucksville,” Griffin said with a grin. “Welcome to my town!” | It’s a remarkable story of being put through what Griffin calls the “Trump wood-chipper”, an apparatus of outrage stretching from bot farms in Macedonia to interrogation rooms in strange airports. So remarkable, in fact, that the famously unflappable Griffin got sidetracked several times on the night remembering yet another part of the story, detours she’d introduce by saying: “Wait, get this shit!” There was a sense in the room, as Griffin moved restlessly between frivolous Tinseltown gossip and caustic political analysis, that we were watching not only a defining moment in Trump-era standup but a referendum on the idea of going high when they go low. “I am the mayor of Zero Fucksville,” Griffin said with a grin. “Welcome to my town!” |
| There is something deeply refreshing about Griffin’s impenitence, especially as Democrats and Republicans alike pay shallow lip service to the value of “civility” in political discourse. What Griffin’s always known, and what the friends and pundits who jilted her ought to learn, is that there’s no use laying claim to politesse in a climate where good decorum’s nothing more than a political cudgel. Faced with the choice to go down fighting or with a curtsy, Griffin will always pick the former. And whichever streaming service eventually picks up this show for a comedy special will thank her for it. | There is something deeply refreshing about Griffin’s impenitence, especially as Democrats and Republicans alike pay shallow lip service to the value of “civility” in political discourse. What Griffin’s always known, and what the friends and pundits who jilted her ought to learn, is that there’s no use laying claim to politesse in a climate where good decorum’s nothing more than a political cudgel. Faced with the choice to go down fighting or with a curtsy, Griffin will always pick the former. And whichever streaming service eventually picks up this show for a comedy special will thank her for it. |
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