Her new material touches on all the Griffin trademarks: her awkward and revealing run-ins with other celebrities, her wine-swilling, blasphemous right-wing mother, and Griffins attempts to ascend the ladder of fame. The best bit comes when she re-enacts her now-infamous Creative Arts Emmy acceptance speech, in which she satirized celebs who thank Jesus when receiving an award. "No one had less to do with this award than Jesus," she famously declared. "In fact I don't even think he likes me."
Some religious groups denounced the speech, in which she also gave Jesus a fairly raunchy set of instructions and wrapped up by stating that "This award is my God now!"
In "Straight to Hell," Griffin reveals that she didn't even write the offending speech herself -- in fact, it was a friend of hers who writes for a children's show. She also not-so-shockingly says that the fall-out from the speech was "heaven," for the publicity-loving performer. Griffin even giddily displays a full-page ad taken out in USA Today by a religious theater group, speaking out against her and her speech. "I couldn't get Bravo [which airs both Griffin's specials and her Emmy-winning reality show 'Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List'] to pay for a third of this," she marvels.
She also talks at length about her repeated appearances on the ABC chatfest "The View," her stint at a roast for Larry King, and her meeting with frequent target Paula Abdul (who, it seems, handled their meeting with grace and tact).
All in all, it's an entertaining performance that will no doubt please her fans...and give her detractors more ammunition. Which, of course, is the point.