Kathy Griffin and the Consequences of the Politics of StupidityOne of the more notable Trump Derangement Syndrome meltdowns back then was publicly offered by comedian Kathy Griffin, who infamously posted a picture of her with a mock, blood covered, severed head of President Trump.
The stunt was so beyond the pale that even the notorious Trump-hating execs at CNN severed the network's professional relationship with her. She also lost an endorsement gig with "Squatty Potty," and the world is probably a better place for it.
The Los Angeles Times recently ran a profile on Griffin, detailing her professional woes of the past couple of years, as well as promoting a new documentary about her travails.
“I’m still totally blacklisted,†she said the other day, sitting in a red dress and taking stock of how a woman who starred on Bravo’s “My Life on the D-List†fell precipitously to the “S†list. “No agency will touch me. No network will touch me. No streaming service will touch me. Nobody. And yet, I’m an earner. I’ve made them all money ...
The stunning thing about Griffin's situation is that she managed to go too far in an era where almost all American leftist outrage is of the "frothing at the mouth" variety.
While most of the Times article is reflexively apologetic for Griffin -- as well as letting her be apologetic for herself -- its premise remains that she managed to be too offensively outrageous even for the dug-in Trump haters in Hollywood.
It is almost certain that Griffin never once pondered that she would get any backlash at all for her photo shoot. Coastal liberals -- especially those in the entertainment industry -- don't know any people who disagree with them politically.
She's doing OK, $$-wise, unless she spends it stupidly, and I'm sure her career will improve some. But she needs to stop deceiving herself. She is not black-listed. She simply made herself so obnoxious to a large percentage of Americans that she is the comedy-equivalent of movies' box office poison. Agents want to make $$, and a client who has alienated 40%-60% of her potential audience won't be profitable enough. If they want to take on a low-profit client, it'll be someone they think has a long future ahead (= young) with lots of potential. Griffin may not have enough active years ahead of her to simply recover to where her career was.
