Last summer, Kathy Griffin made headline after headline after headline after headline for posing with a fake decapitated head of President Donald Trump. She thought it was funny, but a lot of other people didn’t. She was threatened, she lost her New Year’s Eve gig, and she may or may not have lost her friend Anderson Cooper. But, because this is Trump’s America, the country quickly found something new to be outraged by, and Griffin’s career survived.
People quickly forgot about the faux beheading and moved on to other things, like the #MeToo movement, gun violence, the Mueller investigation, Trump’s alleged corruption scandal, Black Panther, the new Kacey Musgraves album—honestly, you name it, and we prioritized it over Kathy Griffin.
Why? Because she’s fine! She’s on a world tour! She sold out Carnegie Hall in one day! This rebound was always going to happen to Kathy Griffin because this is what Kathy Griffin has been doing for decades. By not shutting up about the whole thing, she Streisand Effect-ed her way into something resembling professional ruin, thereby creating a perfect narrative for a “comeback” tour, so to speak. Forgive the cynicism—it’s easy now that we’re a year beyond the initial outrage—but this was always going to happen.
But Griffin is still out there pushing the story that this is an unprecedented triumph. Writes the AP: