Kathy Griffin Make Equality Reality - H 2014
AP Images/InvisionDuring the Aspen Ideas Festival last week, in a conversation with Goldie Hawn, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner controversially remarked: “From my position, the hardest artist to find is a beautiful, funny woman. By far,” adding, “usually, unbelievably beautiful women, you being an exception, are not funny.”
The comments were widely criticized and reverberated throughout the industry. The exec has since clarified his remark, noting in a Monday statement that, “I said such a combination is hard to come by in Hollywood.”
The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Kathy Griffin, who had this to say in response:
Ah, finally!
I really do live for stuff like this. How old is Michael Eisner and how long was he a professional model? OK, OK, it’s not really about him. It’s about the funny women, the Star Chamber-like panel of female experts on hilarity that I have been dreaming of my whole life! Because it’s really about the much younger and much more influential Michael Eisners (and you know who you are) who actually believe this crap.
So with my soon-to-be-formed women-of-comedy hilarious death panel — did I say death panel? That’s a little harsh, but the way that Hollywood puts women out of jobs, or in the case of age discrimination quite simply puts them out to pasture like cows — these comments are on the verge of actually, maybe, possibly, really being unacceptable.
Influencers and decisionmakers who share the views that Eisner was stupid enough to say out loud actually decide whether or not I work, my career and sometimes my personal fate. People who share his views, and all the other men who think the things about women that he is expressing verbally, should simply be subjected to a panel of women — women of my choosing — who decide his career fate and legacy based on his physical appearance.
Our first assignment will be to make him actually look at himself in the mirror. Naked.
