CNN’s New Year’s Eve

If you’re like me, your days of ringing in the New Year at parties are long gone. Instead, I just channel surf for entertainment – until I fall asleep, invariably before midnight. 

CNN used to be the anchor for my TV revelry. That’s until it replaced the dynamic duo of Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin with Cooper and Andy Cohen as co-hosts. 

I miss Kathy Griffin

It was bad enough that CNN fired Griffin in 2017 over a photo stunt, which was perfectly harmless. She posed with a replica of Donald Trump’s bloodied, severed head.

In poor taste? Absolutely. A reason to get the axe? Hardly.

After all, pulling tasteless stunts like that is what comics do. But it killed her career. Meanwhile, her stunt pales in comparison with the actual damage and death Trump has caused with his reckless rhetoric since then.

But Cohen twisted the dagger in Griffin’s back. He not only took her job, but then threw shade at her by pretending he was replacing a celebrity nobody. (Griffin took comic pride in pretending she was on The D-List. But she was a bigger celebrity than Cohen back then.)

I’m all for a gay old time, but…

Frankly, Anderson’ n’ Andy mostly perpetuate tired gay stereotypes. This harkens back to the shameful age of television in the 1950s when shows like Amos’ n’ Andy reinforced Black stereotypes.

It’s a national shame that this brand of self-denigrating minstrelsy still passes for entertainment.