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Why Kathy Griffin Will Not Stand Down

Two years after the comedian’s infamous Trump photo, she’s back — battered but unbowed by right-wing cancel culture.

Kathy Griffin.Credit...Matt Licari/Invision, via Associated Press

Contributing Opinion Writer

“You have to leave the country,” Sharon Stone told Kathy Griffin, in the wake of the controversy surrounding the infamous 2017 photograph of her holding a Donald Trump mask covered with ketchup, “for eight years.”

Ms. Griffin thought about it. And said, “You first.”

Ms. Griffin, one of the most successful comedians in the country, was recognized by Guinness World Records for “most stand-up comedy specials.” She has won two Emmy awards. All six of her comedy albums were nominated for Grammys; her breakout recording, “For Your Consideration,” made her the first comedian to debut at the top of the Billboard Top Comedy Albums chart. She estimates she’s earned over $75 million in the course of her career.

But for the last two years, she hasn’t gotten work.

Not the kind of work she wants, anyway. Since the Mask Incident, she’s traveled the world for her “Laugh Your Head Off Tour.” But in the wake of the scandal, her American appearances in 2017 were canceled. She was fired from her gig as co-host, with Anderson Cooper, of CNN’s New Year’s Eve show. Her commercial sponsors — including Squatty Potty — dropped her in a heartbeat.

Because the makers of a special seat designed to improve excretion found their association with Kathy Griffin bad for their image, I guess.

This story is about more than a comedian and a disturbing photograph. It’s about what America has become: a place where in the wake of a single mistake, a career can be canceled, a place where the president of the United States can happily use the power of his office to destroy an American citizen.

“I am an infinitesimal dot in this frightening political landscape,” Ms. Griffin told me. “I fought imperfectly, but genuinely, with all my might.”

We think of so-called cancel culture as an excess of the left. (The author Meghan Daum, in reacting to the movement, says, “Woke me when it’s over.”) But in this case, it was the right wing doing the canceling, with the not-inconsiderable muscle of the Department of Justice added in for good measure.

That photo of the ketchup-covered mask — can we agree on this much? — was beyond ugly. “What if Daniel Pearl’s mother saw it?” Ms. Griffin asked miserably, days after the photo went viral. She issued a formal apology, in hopes of forgiveness.

But Ms. Griffin has not been forgiven. “You’ve been Dixie Chicked,” a friend told her, referring to the singers who found their career upended after they had the temerity to question the wisdom of invading Iraq. “I didn’t get Dixie Chicked,” Ms. Griffin said. “I got Dixie …” — well, you can use your imagination for what she said.

She received death threats, thousands of them. “You’re no different from Bill Cosby,” went one letter. “I’m glad your sister died of cancer. I wish it was you.”

She was put on the no-fly list for two months. And her lawyers confirmed she was investigated by the Secret Service and the Justice Department. They considered charging her with conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States, the sentence for which is life in prison.

Her new film, “Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story” — released for one day in theaters on Wednesday — shows the toll the whole experience has taken on her. In the movie, which is part stand-up, part documentary, you hear her funny — and harrowing — act.

But you also see her weeping under the strain. She receives more threats; she’s stopped and held at airports, sometimes for as long as six hours, a result of being placed on an Interpol watch list. There are other things the film does not show — a Trump supporter outside of a Houston show brandishing a switchblade; others disrupting performances in San Francisco, Philadelphia and elsewhere.

To watch her performing is to see a woman on the brink. There are moments when it seems Ms. Griffin is going to snap in two.

Nevertheless, she persists.

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Did Donald Trump and his supporters truly think that the spokeswoman for Squatty Potty had joined the Islamic State? Did they really think that the star of “My Life on the D-List” and “Suddenly Susan” was actually advocating the decapitation of the president?

Or is it just possible that all of this outrage was manufactured, that a single act of truly bad taste was transformed by the president’s men into an instant excuse to unleash all their hatred? How is it possible that people who were appalled by Ms. Griffin’s mistake appear, at the same time, to be unconcerned with the antics of the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office? Because, in fact, Ms. Griffin’s photo wasn’t a call for decapitation. It was a call for resistance.

At one point, she says, the Secret Service was attempting to get her to come in for an interrogation wearing an orange jump suit, in handcuffs.

Would you have done it, if you were Kathy Griffin? Of course you wouldn’t. You’d have feared the effect of that image upon your supporters, many of whom belong to some of the country’s most marginalized groups.

“Over my dead body am I letting anyone see me doing a perp walk in a jump suit for my First Amendment rights, which I did not violate,” she said. “I’m not letting a woman see it. I’m not letting a person of color see it. I’m not letting a gay person see it. I don’t care how much it costs — over my dead body, a perp walk like a common criminal.”

Ms. Griffin is surely not the first celebrity to find her career shattered as a result of saying or doing something inappropriate. But there’s something in her fate unique to the Trump era, a special kind of anger reserved for women, and older women at that (Griffin is 58). Is her photograph so much more unforgivable than, say, Johnny Depp asking, at the 2017 Glastonbury Festival: “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president? It’s been awhile, and maybe it’s time.” Later, just like Ms. Griffin, he said he was “not insinuating anything.”

These comments did not end Mr. Depp’s career. Ms. Griffin, meanwhile, is doing stand-up for medium-size audiences in theaters. Neither CNN nor Squatty Potty has called.

“What happened to me truly was historic and unprecedented in the worst kind of way,” she said. “But I fought it tooth and nail.”

Is she going to keep doing this work, in spite of the obvious toll it’s taken on her?

“If you don’t stand up,” she said, “you get run over.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Jennifer Finney Boylan, a contributing opinion writer, is a professor of English at Barnard College and the author of the novel “Long Black Veil.” @JennyBoylan

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