Most Americans probably don't know who Kathy Griffin is--even after she co-hosted the New Year's Eve show with CNN's Anderson Cooper.
Here's who Griffin is: She is a reality TV star ("My Life on the D-List") and a Christian-basher. Hey, that latter comment is my opinion, but read what she said here, and here, and you decide.
But The Cable Gamer doesn't think that there are two ways of interpreting these words, which she said upon winning an Emmy:
"A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. Suck it, Jesus. This award is my God now."
Haw, haw. Not only do I think that that's offensive and tasteless, but I also think this: Griffin was being fake-courageous, going for a cheap and vulgar joke at an easy target, because Christians are mostly gentle and, as a rule, law-abiding. And free speech, as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once observed, means freedom for the speech that we hate. If Griffin had really wanted to be brave, she could have made a joke about Allah. In which case, of course, she'd probably be dead by now--or deeply in seclusion.
But OK, this blog is about The Cable Game, not about sacrilegious Hollywoodites.
And so back to CNN. We might ask: Why did CNN put Griffin on the air? One wonders if CNN execs even knew, or cared, about Griffin's Christian-bashing words. Once again, we can be darn sure that if Griffin had slurred some more politically group, such as blacks, that CNN would have banned her for life. But once again, it was "only" Christians, so who cares? Nobody at CNN, that's for sure.
And revealingly, not many in the liberal-leaning media seem to have noticed. For example, Rachel Sklar, writing for The Huffington Post, went on and on about how funny and delightful Griffin was, in tandem with Cooper.
Indeed, Sklar was so overcome with enthusiasm that she wrote the following review of the evening's programming--see if you can spot the howler:
CNN had the much-ballyhooed Anderson Cooper (when is he ever not ballyhooed?) paired with Kathy Griffin, which was a surprisingly good match (Anderson played straight man..."
Oops. Excu-u-u-u-se ME, Anderson!
But don't worry, Rachel, all is forgiven here at The Cable Game. However, if you get the cold shoulder from La Anderson at the next GLAAD dinner, well, don't be surprised.
And one last question: Where's Jon Klein and CNN management? Some enterprising reporter might inquire as to whether or not CNN top dogs approve of Griffin--of course, the answer is that they must have.
So nothing has changed at CNN from the bad old days of its arrogance. I mean, we all knew that ex-CNN chief Ted Turner was a bigtime Christian basher, but the legendarily unstable "The Mouth of the South" is long gone from the CNN scene. And yet this incident--what was CNN thinking?--reveals that the same Christian-sliming mentality is flourishing at the Time-Warner Center.
UPDATE: On Tuesday night's edition of "AC 360," a completely unabashed--and obviously quite pleased with himself--Cooper was yucking it up, replaying tapes of himself and Griffin, reliving all of last night's "humor." So it's obvious that AC is either unaware of the pain he is causing, or just doesn't care.
