Kathy Griffin makes ‘the list’
Few comedians annoy me the way Kathy Griffin does, so you’d think she’d be the last one whose defense I would come to. But here I am, defending this unfunny hack. 
Turns out a joke she made at last year’s Golden Globe Awards at the expense of wunderkind actress Dakota Fanning has drawn the ire of none other than director Steven Spielberg. According to Griffin:
“I get a call from the lawyers, and they’re, like, ‘DreamWorks is furious about the whole Dakota Fanning thing, and they’re livid, and Spielberg is personally furious, and DreamWorks is putting you on a list, and they demand an apology.’”
For anyone who’s actually seen the clip of the “rehab” joke, you’re more inclined to believe an apology should be made more for the lack of humor than the content. But if Spielberg did, indeed, demand an apology on behalf of Fanning, then that’s just clown shit, man.
Comedians — the funny as well as the dull — can say whatever the hell they want to say. The last time I checked, this was America, land of Freedom of Speech and all that cad, so demanding an apology just makes it seem like you think you’re above everyone else. Just let it go, Steven. The joke sucked anyway. (Besides, E! already canned Griffin for the comment.)
January 10th, 2006 at 9:46 am
What Spielberg doesn’t get is that the joke was about the run-rate of former child actors who ended up doing a stint in rehab, not based on any specific feelings about Dakota Fanning.
Also, based on a historical analysis I spent the last few hours preparing, excluding wild anomalies for both sides of the projection (Drew Barrymore, Jonathan Lipnicki) that deviate exceptionally strongly from the mean, the odds are roughly 42.9% that she will in fact end up in rehab for drugs or alcohol or with an eating disorder.