Comedienne Kathy Griffin pointed out what she claimed was a glaring double standard with regard to how CNN treated her after a media misstep when compared to CNN staffer Jeffrey Toobin.
The network cut ties with Griffin in 2017 after she went viral for holding a graphic photo of a severed head bearing former President Donald Trump’s likeness.
CNN temporarily suspended chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin after he was caught masturbating on a company Zoom call.
What are the details?
Griffin on Thursday told the host of ABC’s “The View” that a “double standard” was permeating the ranks of CNN.
She made the remarks after co-host Ana Navarro asked her thoughts about Rep. Paul Gosar’s (R-Ariz.) tweeted a controversial doctored animated video that depicted him attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y).
“I think there’s another conversation that we’re not ready to have yet in this country, unfortunately,” she said, alluding to the double standard. “We’re hopefully making some strides, finally, with race. We’re having conversations, at least. But I think that we haven’t really talked about the level of misogyny and ageism that went along with all of that. I mean, I got canned from CNN, which hurt me personally because I had loved that gig.”
She added, “But then for me to watch Jeffrey Toobin talking about woman’s choice after he masturbated on a Zoom call, which I know sounds funny but maybe it wasn’t so funny for the other ladies who worked at The Atlantic that had to see that.”
Griffin erroneously pointed out that Toobin was a writer at the Atlantic, when he was instead a writer for the New Yorker.
While the New Yorker fired him over the offending incident, CNN permitted him to return in June, following an eight-month-long hiatus.
Anything else?
Navarro — a former CNN staffer — might not have been the most sympathetic person for Griffin to complain to, considering that she initially defended his eventual CNN return saying that he was “sexually harassing himself maybe.”
“You know, actually I’m not surprised he’s back on the air,” she said at the time. “But I will tell you when I saw that interview, oh, God, how embarrassing, how humiliating. I kept thinking to myself, ‘If I have to go on live TV and explain to the nation why I masturbated on a Zoom call, I think I would rather go sell avocados under I-95 than get my job back on TV.'”
She added that Toobin was not overtly sexually harassing anyone.
“He didn’t have the intent to sexually harass somebody,” she insisted. “He was sexually harassing himself maybe.”
“I also think CNN is a for-profit business. If viewers don’t like it, then they should make their views known,” she continued. “If they wanna have some grace, if they wanna say, ‘We’re not gonna cancel a guy because he made a stupid mistake.’ I think his bigger problem is, frankly, with himself, with his family, with his wife than it is with his CNN colleagues. Because it was not something that was done to us. It was something stupid, horrific, kinky, freaky that he did. But it wasn’t something he was trying to do to us, his CNN colleagues.”