After her ill-advised Donald Trump photo stunt went spectacularly bad earlier this summer, Kathy Griffin dutifully apologized. But because this administration loves to hitch a ride on the outrage machine while also trying to derail it, the scandal didn’t conclude with that video. So Griffin met her critics—including virtually every member of the Trump family—head on, holding a press conference in which she addressed the not-quite-equal amount of influence that she and the president of the United States wield. Being on the defensive didn’t quite work out for Griffin either; she lost her longtime CNN gig and her management for posing with a fake severed head that resembled Trump.
So the comedian went into seclusion, but after about three months in self-imposed exile (which was an act of self-preservation, given the death threats she was receiving), Griffin is ready to act as provocateur once more. As she tells New York Magazine’s Yashar Ali, she’s mounting a new tour—apparently, her concert agent at ICM hasn’t shunned her. And she’s all out of apologies, despite having an especially groveling one prewritten for her by a friend and current CBS board member. Ali tweeted a screenshot of the email Griffin received from CBS Corporation’s Arnold Kopelson, who wrote the kind of “Dear Leader” letter you’d expect to read in something like V For Vendetta, further signaling our descent into a dystopia.
The apology’s rife with grammatical errors—although “meh plea” has a nice ring to it—but what’s most disturbing about it is how utterly sycophantic it is. Kopelson’s advice is basically for Griffin to eat shit while begging the president, who’s spent more time tweeting about the border wall than a besieged Texas, for forgiveness. It even has a reference to “false news,” in case the president’s mind started to wander in the middle of this page-long document. Kopelson, whose producing credits include Platoon and The Devil’s Advocate, urges her to mail the letter to Trump and release it exclusively to Fox broadcasting, presumably because that’s the only outlet Trump watches.
Kopelson and CBS declined to comment on the letter, which would have been a total repudiation of Griffin’s liberal leanings if she’d sent it. While she’s aware that releasing it will probably only bring her more trouble, she also appears out of fucks to give about threats—to her career, at least. Just look at the promo for her “Laugh Your Head Off” tour.