If Cathy Griffin Were a Man, Would Her Emmy Acceptance Speech Have Been Censored?

I have experienced obvious sexism when it comes to telling jokes in real life one too many times myself from doing stand-up comedy at the comedy clubs. A woman will get up on stage to do a stand-up comedy set, tell some thought-out and well-written jokes, and most people in the audience won't laugh. It's not because she isn't being funny. Most professional comedians know the formula for creating an effective concoction of set-up and punch lines and I know from personal experience that a lot of women work harder at writing good jokes than do men.

Some audience members will sit in their chairs sipping margaritas while examining every move and every word that comes out of her mouth. Some men won't laugh simply because it would be equivalent to being one-upped by a woman while some women won't laugh because they are too busy comparing butt sizes. Then after the show, the same people who didn't laugh, will come up and say, "You were so funny." But this never happens to men. Guys tell jokes that don't have punch lines and still get laughs.

Seeing Kathy Griffin being censored with her Emmy acceptance speech made me wonder: had a man made the same acceptance speech, would it have been taken as a sarcastic joke rather than an attack on the right wing?

In her speech, Kathy Griffin said "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 then held up her Emmy and said, "Hell has frozen over. Suck it Jesus, this award is my god now!"

I somehow find her comments too ridiculous to think she is being serious. First of all, if Kathy Griffin truly felt that way about Jesus, she wouldn't be as popular as she is in a country with a predominantly Christian population. She has been around for quite a long time and her feelings regarding religion would have been expressed way before winning the award. Most sponsors would have pulled out long ago if there had been any controversial dissent. I think that if she had said something to help people better understand her thoughts about the award, like including how winning is a matter of probability, hard work and purely a numbers game, she may not have been so heavily vilified.

Her speech being censored is a significant turning point in our history. My feeling is that this has more to do with sexism than her statements regarding Jesus not helping her to win the award. Griffin is a successful woman in a time where women are starting to make more money than men and the attack looks to me that it's being done primarily to bring her down. By having her speech censored, it shows that we don't have the ability to express our own opinions unless we are part of the right boys' club. If a man (for an example let's just use the famous comics Robin Williams, George Carlin or Dennis Leary) had won the award and charmingly made the same speech, it might not have generated such a strong negative response. Thrown in with a few "dick jokes," the speech would have been taken as racy slapstick humor instead.

In the aftermath, Griffin has said, "Am I the only Catholic left with a sense of humor?" Giving Griffin the benefit of a doubt - if she was truly telling a joke - it would be an extremely sarcastic joke. It sounds to me like she's mocking something that she feels is meaningless, in this case, an Emmy Award. She's proclaiming it to be her god just as most people who watch television might proclaim television to be their god. Perhaps this is her way of expressing what she feels is false worship while on the other hand nobody vilifies the millions of people who watch television and come into work the next day completely engrossed and preoccupied over the new Idol winner or Survivor achieving the status of an object of worship.