Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
This entire shift in culture is coming down to one simple reality.
The Truth.
They don’t offer any of it in anything that they say or do. Her entire presser is loaded from front to back with contradictions, which are the places where truth and fiction collide.
Let’s look-
Kathy Griffin has had a career in the comedy industry that has lasted over 20 years. She has been on TV, appeared in film, written books, had award winning recordings, played venues like Carnegie Hall and Times Square on New Years Eve. And all of this with an act that is near the bottom of what any reasonable comic would consider to be “funny”. One of the worst parts of being a comic is that you become jaded. Once you’ve figured out the tricks of audience manipulation, joke construction and physical delivery little remains that will make you laugh.
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The ones who can make comics laugh are known to be playing to the back of the room- comic’s comics. Kathy Griffin has a reputation in the industry as being one of the least funny, most difficult and erratic people to deal with. She isn’t nice to people, she’s got an ego that is far larger than her talent warrants, she’s been handed prime spots simply because she’s a female and she’s built a huge army of comics, club owners and staff that simply revile her for these reasons. And yet she claims that “white men” have held her back? Hey Kathy, aren’t you signed with William Morris? He’s an old white guy and so is your agent, Ari Emmanuel and his partner Patrick Whitesell. What’s the problem, no female agents of color in Hollywood? Hypocrite.
You don’t see one thing in this entire episode and no seems to notice- have you seen anyone in the comedy world come forward to tell people what a genuine and decent soul she is? How naturally funny and kind, how good she’s been to others or how often she has been there for other performers, how she brought down the house with unbelievably funny and original material, always worked her ass off to get where she is?
No, it’s been as silent as deep space.
You cannot accept the awards, the appearances and the celebrity she’s had handed to her with an at best mediocre talent and then simultaneously claim you’ve been held down by the same people who have unfairly given you everything that your talent couldn’t possibly have afforded. The words do not match the reality and that’s why the entire presser comes off phony baloney.
The tears? You just went after someone personally and that person responded so you hire a lawyer and cry about it? That’s the funniest thing she’s ever done- because it’s true! How much hubris, how little awareness of the way events transpired does one have to have to make that play?
Comedy is not art. Sorry, done both and the two are not the same. Comedy is closer to politics than it is to art- you might have some creative moments in the construction of a bit that requires an understanding of language and performance, but that’s not the same thing. Trying to claim artistic license is a joke, I’ll give her that much, but in every venue any comic has ever played there are rules about what you can and can’t say, what topics you may or may not bring up and her attorney is simply lying through her teeth about “artistic freedom” and all the rest of her nonsensical BS trying to turn what was clearly an offensive, inappropriate political statement into some cleverly constructed comedic gem.
In comedy terms that bit bombed and her smart move- had she any comedic chops at all- would have been to quickly misdirect and go on to a solid bit that she could close with, but then she’s not a good comic, she’s and affirmative action hire tagging along at the fringe of the real industry. If you had any idea how many far funnier male comics have been pushed aside for her hatchet face you’d be shocked. That isn’t to say that there aren’t some funny females in the business, there are, but she isn’t one of them. Wendy Liebman, T Marni Vos, Maria Bamford, Beth Donahue- each of those is fifty times funnier at a hell gig than the Kathy Griffin has ever been on her best night, but for some reason (LGBT) she’s gotten ahead of all of them.
Her career will be just fine after this blows over and it will likely be a career boost that she needs if she’s going to keep a face like that in public view. The rabid SJW’s will rally behind her and she’ll develop yet another corps of followers.
What should be the takeaway here is that you can make these people feel the pain the way they have done it to those with opposing viewpoints. They are just as vulnerable to boycott and denunciations as the conservative comic/actor/celebrity and they can be made to feel just as uncomfortable as they have long claimed to feel when they hear things that trigger them. Turnabout is fair play.
People have been fed a steady diet of BS for so long about so many things that when a whiff of truth escapes they jump on it like a a starving man goes for a piece of bread.
The entire episode is one of artifice, banality, mediocrity and false premises masquerading as art and entertainment. Her presser was a bigger mistake than the original joke bomb and people may not get it intellectually, but on a visceral level they get it.
Good article, HSF. I was looking for one article that would neatly sum up the whole Kathy Griffin fiasco, because I wanted to devote a minimum of attention to it. I’ve found it and I’ll post it later today on SLL.
Yeah, I agree with everything that you said but you have several typos in the piece that are not up to your very high standards. Words left out, and wrong words used.
It was a comment I posted as a post. Lighten up Francis.
The grammar Nazis are out in force. I never learned to diagram a sentence, but I always managed to drive a bug up the ass of those who pretended they were smarter than me.
She is no more a “comedian” than I am. And I’m definitely not one! She is a nasty old woman that decided she would insult President Trump with an incredibly disgusting “joke”. However, she did not expect the resultant reaction from our President and millions of other Americans. It seems that she has never experienced this kind of reaction(having a major mudhole stomped in her ugly ass) and she didn’t know what to do except play the victim card. What a sorry waste of O2 this POS is!
I just hope that today is the last day we will endure further discussion of that bitch. She may be one of the chosen people but I am choosing not to give her another minute of my time.
I’m plannin on talkin about her for two more fuckin weeks just to piss you off, Bea. It will be my hobbyhorse.
Ed, I speculated that this story would go on until the next terrorist event. It didn’t take long. Trump is now Scot-free. The fascist right has the moral advantage.
The outrage at Trump’s anti-American shenanigans with the Ruskies is dead and buried. The three powers will now rule the roost. Europe’s environmental safe-zone has been dealt a death-blow. We’ll soon be shipping GMO products and mad-cow beef to the EU. The poorer members of the EU will buy it, fuck Germany. That’s who the Donald is competing with. Things haven’t changed much, it’s still “fuck the EU” or as Cheney said, have you heard any orders to the contrary? It’s a big club and Europe ain’t in it.
You’re a true jackass, Ed. Takes one to know one. That was choice. Carry on.
Thanks for the analysis from one who knows the business. I hope multiple websites pick this up.
Officials at the Missouri State Fair have banned for life a rodeo clown who entertained spectators during a bull riding contest while wearing a Barack Obama mask.
yeah suck it kathy
HSF, very good article. The fact that all of her comedy comrades are looking at their shoes rather then coming to her defense says it all. She must be one royal bitch. If I never see her again after this event, it will be too soon.
Ironic that at the presser the women made complete jackasses of themselves whining about the white guys while the one white guy up there came off the best.
Kathy who? Never knew she existed before the other day & still dont give 2 shits, so that part of the hype machine is working. She munches rug? Wow… big surprise with a kisser like that, & I still dont care.
I saw on a comment here that she was in Pulp Fiction. Not in the opening credits, so I’d still never heard of her nor did I recognize her sour puss. After watching the movie again out of curiosity I’m still unsure what part she played; it was apparently that small. It seems she’s used her broken filter & added the dyke & female angle to be all that she can be (not much).
A couple days ago David Codrea posted her upcoming shows with links to the venues so anyone so inclined could share their distaste for this twat with the venues. At least 3 more have cancelled her act since then.
If you care to join in here’s the link.
http://waronguns.blogspot.com/2017/05/im-sure-its-just-oversight.html
Good summation Hardscrabble. Now can we please stop seeing & hearing about this attention whore?
When Butch ran down Marcellus Wallis and crashed the Honda, Kathy G. played a bystander with half a line.
Thanks. Now I know. So she was like… an extra?
Miles, she was more like a leftover.
Sorry HSF, don’t give a shit. There are some things worth commenting about and there are others that are not. KG is an “are not.” Saw you were contributor, started to read, then quit. The topic was a waste of your talent.
Pentafore… HSF didn’t POST it. Admin plucked his comment off another thread because HE deemed it postworthy. Save your disdain for a real posting.
That’s the tyranny of the public, they always demand more of the same. As Ricky Nelson said, …if memories were all I sang, I rather drive a truck.
HF is more than a farmer. I wish I had a nickel for all the morons coming out of the woodwork cluck-clucking about things that don’t meet their high standards here.
The list of comics that crashed and burned is a bit too long to be mere coincidence. I don’t mean to say they are saints, more likely they aren’t. Comedians are like a drug, the audience keeps asking for more jokes, stronger doses. Eventually, they drain the comic who has been mining the miasma of his soul for personal misery to mock.
Those are the comics that connect with the public. The rest are irritating jokesters.
Anyway, I can’t disagree more with the morons who said this was a waste of a comment turned into an article. I suspect these men of action prefer to bash in a few heads, maybe lop them off, rather than discuss the matter like civilized white men. The USA isn’t turning more conservative, it’s becoming more Musloidal.
Yeah, well…..I wish I had a nickel for every nickel I have.
Riding a hobby horse, Commissar?
Fuckin A, primo.
hey ed,
do you remember “blazing saddles?”
that was funny, but creating it today?
no way. pancakes would faint/i mean
snowflakes would melt.
hsf…
i think your essay/commentary is excellent…
well stated, and apt.
Dammit, you misspelled MORANS again. Twice.
I personally knew two Morans, and their families- One a fiddler and the other a guitarist. I’d place them in the top 10% of all I’ve ever heard/played with, and I’ve heard a lot.
Could be that I’ve missed a joke in my absence from the Platform, but you can rest assured that both Tommy’s heard quite enough of that Moran/moron bullshit in their day. They were father and son. They were good men and great musicians, IMHO.
Ace, nobody is picking on the Morans. It’s simply an inside joke among TBPers that refers back to a picture of a moron holding a sign that says – Get a brain, morans.
Then there’s that thing with making a numbered list.
And the ever-loving misapplication of your for you’re designed to vex and piss off grammar Nazis.
Even after being here a couple of years, I still miss a joke or two about things that went on in the Smokey era.
I entertain a fantasy. (I might say “I have a dream” but I read how the King family claims that opening phrase belongs to the late civil rights leader and I wouldn’t want Admin to get sued for my plagiaristic ways).
In my fantasy, Kathy Griffin’s ridiculous attempt to demand victim status FAILS because she did something so vile that no one seems to want to defend her except a lunatic giggly lawyer claiming to champion civil liberties masquerading behind a despicable joke about a President’s severed head. Since she supposedly apologized for the joke and stands by that apology, says she, the consequences she now faces are not only unfair, but they are the result of Trump being a bully. Therefore, since he’s caused her to face the consequences she feels she so rightfully should avoid — she apologized, didn’t she?– Trump has picked the wrong redhead and now, he deserves what she is going to do to him now.
My, my, my. That comment about going after the whole Trump family, including his youngest son does sound like a threat, even if it is from a skinny pathetic has been (who never should have been, according to peer reviewer HSF who is far more believable as a person than Griffin). Since the Secret Service is bound to investigate the threat, I assume that Griffin’s slap on the wrist won’t hurt much more than Ted Nugent’s slap on the wrist during the Romney-Obama electioneering cycle a few years ago. However, my fantasy has nothing to do with anything the Secret Service or CNN or Squatty Potty CEOs do to Griffin.
My fantasy is that from door to door, phone to phone, laptop to laptop and screen to screen, people begin to talk about a culture that has completely transformed into something so heinous they can’t just sit idly by any longer. I think about what might happen if those of us longing for the gentle humor of Mary Tyler Moore demand that quality of entertainment along with that of all the female sitcom spinoffs her costars enjoyed and made or broke on their own talents. And for political humor, who handled Archie Bunker better than gentle Edith, except feisty Gloria or even the Meathead himself. And until they moved on up to the East Side, the Jefferson’s taught all of us about the inequalities inherent in simply being a different color in the house next door to the Bunkers. Then, they taught us about wearing the other shoe in their penthouse apartment in the sky high high. And we laughed and learned.
So, in my fantastical thoughts, a massive movement of fiftyish to seventyish folks start talking to one another and to their grandchildren about how much fun it was to be able to sit together as a family and laugh at the idiotic bigotry handled brilliantly by skilled writers for genuine comic teams who really understood how to change the world with ideas. And an army of fiftyish to seventyish people who just happen to hold a vast amount of the wealth not yet stolen by the political class might just be able to do something about a world where a no talent like Kathy Griffin declares war on the child of a sitting President because she claims that her own stuff is not appropriate for children so if the kid saw the severed head gag, too bad.
In my fantasy, my army of culture saviors declare to Kathy that we are finished with her and her ilk. We are sick of the writers’ union out of Hollywood whose agenda prevents anyone with innovative ideas from even submitting them for consideration without a union card number on the submission and we are sick of having nothing to watch but gags about blowjobs from two broke girls with no talent and worse writers. My fantasy army doesn’t have to march anywhere. In fact, when you are holding all the money the advertisers and Squatty Potty CEOs are trying to get, as my army is holding, the culture will march to them.
I may come back to this later, but for now… a hillbilly bunny farmer in the Ozarks can still dream, can’t I? Well, maybe not DREAM, since that violates copyright, but I can still fantasize.
Stupendous
Oh jeez.. the gentle humor of Norman Lear?? Laughing my ass off, here.
Kind of funny how Maggie got a large and unanimous number of upvotes, when normally certain mediatical influences appear to be reviled here. Maybe y’all wanna go back and edit your votes…?!
My point was about being nostalgic for those less violent times of “yore.” And wondering how we got from Carol Burnett to Kathy Griffin in one generation. Kind of like East Germany after the wall was built.
I believe in old world state of Mass the common phrase was “burn the witch” Seems appropriate.
Now if the world could just get rid of Sarah Silverman ???I have never seen KG mock The crucifixion of Jesus Christ or Christians but this Jew gal does it alot .She is mean , hateful and as arrogant as they come.Plus she is not funny. Must be more Affirmative Action.
You can add Samantha Bee and Amy Schumer to that list, two seriously unfunny women.
My mistake. Can hardly contain a reaction. 99% is all white noise. The screeching static coming from the media overloads my senses. To early here to start drinking.
Understand, but we TBPers kinda like the farmer dude and don’t like to see him dissed when he didn’t earn it.
Now, iffen he earns it?
The question begged is, why all the white noise? Could it be that the firing of Comey and all the Sturm und Drang of that long ago era last month has been paved over with a feckless foreign trip and a brouhaha in the barroom?
I don’t want to know what’s going on, I want to know what’s coming off. – Dr. Pangloss
The apparent redundancy of that statement is that there is covert action behind the frantic scene before us. Of course, the Professor was joking about a stripper but it was also meant to be a witty observation of the machinations of politicians and a warning to be alert to the changes.
Something wicked this way comes. By the way, I invited HollyO to post using your moniker, EC. I figured that way you would get credit for some clever, edgy prose.
I see all the references to white noise, but I can’t help but think it is more of the rumble of thunder on the plains… far out where you can’t quite see what sort of thunderheads are gathering at the horizon and you just listen to them rumbling, wondering if it is just a passing rainstorm or if something more ominous is signaling.
I, for one, suspect something ominous.
Yeah, I can’t do clever, edgy stuff. Maybe she’ll even ‘get’ the male psyche this time instead of painting men as pussy hounds. We like sports also, boxing and bowling. I’d rather have BB ghost-write for me. Something titled: The Art of the Schlemiel
Elpidio, I befoul myself in the milk of the white noise.
2:26 pm? lol have at er bud
Thanks for the insight HF. I laughed harder at your post and Admins reference to Private Benjamin than I have ever laughed at any of KG’s comedic efforts.
I haven’t really paid much attention to this but all I see is another liberal showing no accountability for their actions.
I think it was from Stripes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OnpkDWbeJs
Thanks. Hadn’t had my first coffee yet.
covfefe, coffee is the antiquated spelling, obsolete.
STOP.
Maggie,
that was very funny!
Laughing and laughing at your joke.
It really feels good to laugh.
The cunt that liked dishing out the insults reveals herself to be so thin-skinned. It’s the first time she ever got a laugh out of me.
There something about her entire persona that, to me, is like witnessing a woman scratch her long, enamel-fortified fingernails steadily down a circa 1960s school chalkboard.
Unperturbed, it’s a persona, much like yours. It isn’t you but its that veneer of vulnerability that you present. Do you ever get any enamel fortified fingernails dug into your back with that plastic coating?
Every Friday night. Just KIDDING! Or M I?
Unscathed, I think your old lady gave me a down-thumbs up there. I guess you are taking care of bidness.
This popped up on my Yahoo feed-after Farmer’s comment in the article about her being a lgbt ,I wonder if Griffin didn’t go after her because she wouldn’t sleep with her.
“Demi Lovato Disses Mystery Bully”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/demi-lovato-disses-mystery-apos-155911194.html
She would go nuts if I waived my Rebel Flag but waving Trump’s bloody head is OK? There will be a payback for all the Useless Idiots later this Summer.
excellent first sentence rhs jr,
but the 2nd smacks of threat.
Or, will it rain on UI? What are you talking about?
I hope we have a quiet fruitful summer…the financial
guys are warning us of $$ problems growing this fall.
The secret service I am sure are making her life miserable right now. They don’t have a sense of humor.
It would be funny to see a comedian trying to get the secret service to laugh.