If you watch the broadcast of the Emmy Awards on E! Entertainment this Saturday you won’t be hearing Kathy Griffin say that during her acceptance speech even though she did say it:
In her speech, Griffin said that “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.”
She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-color remark about Christ and proclaim, “This award is my god now!”
The folks at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences felt Kathy was a tad bit over the line, ya see, so they’re going to censor her:
“Kathy Griffin’s offensive remarks will not be part of the E! telecast on Saturday night,” the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences said in a statement Monday.
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According to the TV academy and E!, when the four hour-plus ceremony is edited into a two-hour program, Griffin’s remarks will be shown in “an abbreviated version” in which some language may be bleeped.
Catholic League President Bill Donohue wasn’t happy either. He released a statement saying:
“Mel Gibson. Michael Richards. Isaiah Washington. Imus. Jerry Lewis. Every time a celebrity offends a segment of the population, he pays a price, in one way or another. The question now is whether Kathy Griffin will pay a similar price for her outburst. And as we have learned, her verbal assault was calculated.
“In an interview with Houston’s gay magazine, OutSmart, Griffin described herself as a ‘complete militant atheist.’ Unfortunately, her kind of vulgar in-your-face brand of hate speech found a receptive audience on Saturday: The Hollywood Reporter says her foul remark ‘drew laughs.’
“It is incumbent upon Dick Askin, chairman and chief executive officer of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, to denounce Griffin’s obscene and blasphemous comment; a statement should also be read on Sunday. After all, it is his organization that is responsible for the Creative Arts Emmy event. Moreover, given the way the Hollywood crowd received Griffin’s remark, it falls to Askin to distance the Academy from this outrageous incident. We are contacting Griffin’s agent as well.
“It is sure bet that if Griffin had said, ‘Suck it, Muhammad,’ there would have been a very different reaction from the crowd and from the media who covered this event. To say nothing of the Muslim reaction.”
So I guess what he’s really saying here is that if Muslims can pitch a fit every time someone says something they don’t like then, by golly, us Catholics can do it too! What next? Is he going to unleash rampaging nuns on Hollywood?
News of the Academy’s decision to bleep Kathy’s remarks seems to have appeased the Great Catholic Terror for the moment, but he’s still not entirely pleased:
“The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences reacted responsibly to our criticism of Kathy Griffin’s verbal assault on 85 percent of the U.S. population. The ball is now in Griffin’s court. The self-described ‘complete militant atheist’ needs to make a swift and unequivocal apology to Christians. If she does, she will get this issue behind her. If she does not, she will be remembered as a foul-mouthed bigot for the rest of her life.”
Bigot? For saying “suck it, Jesus?” You’ve got to be kidding me. I could possibly see the claim that she’s a bigot had she said something like, “all Catholics are inbred pedophiles that should be rounded up and shot like rabid dogs” but she didn’t say anything like that. She told Jesus to suck it and if anyone should be pissed it’s Jesus and I’m sure she’d love to discuss it with him over coffee should he bother to actually show up and demand an apology.
First an apology would require that she actually, you know, felt sorry about her comments. I don’t know how many of Kathy’s shows Bill has seen, but she doesn’t seem like the sort to regret saying what she said. Secondly, she has a point about stars getting up and thanking Jesus repeatedly for winning a stupid Emmy as though suggesting that Jesus would give a shit either way. There’s a certain breed of Christian out there that’s not unique to any one denomination that seems to think they have to attribute any positive thing that happens to them, no matter how trivial it happens to be, to the efforts of Jesus as opposed to anything they themselves might have done and all Kathy is doing is poking a little fun at them. If these people really believe that their success is because of Jesus’ and not themselves then they should get the hell off the stage and let Jesus go up there and accept the award. After all he did all the hard work according to them.
In the meantime I suppose Catholic League President Bill Donohue has to do something to ensure that the Muslims don’t get to hog the lucrative Overblown Outrage spotlight all to themselves for fear that Catholics will otherwise become completely irrelevant.
Militant Christians are just too chickenshit to strap bombs to their chest and throw themselves at police checkpoints for their superstitions. They’ve never had any trouble murdering people who piss them off, no matter how they’ll cage their reasons for doing so.
Hell, I’ve been stuck in traffic waiting for folks in the US to clean up after Christian fundamentalism’s bombs against the unholy. It’s not what variety of fundamentalism that’s the problem, it’s that deeply held beliefs in humans often lead to violence when challenged.