Names and faces
Comedian Kathy Griffin is embarking on her comeback, some nine months after she provoked outrage — and lost much of her work — by posing with a fake severed head that appeared to depict President Donald Trump. Griffin announced on HBO’s Real Time With
Bill Maher this weekend that she had just booked upcoming shows at New York’s Carnegie Hall and at Washington’s Kennedy Center — “Trump’s backyard,” she called it. “I’m dipping my toes into touring again,” Griffin said, adding that the Republican president and his supporters would prefer she never worked again. Griffin’s appearance on Maher’s show marked the beginning of her apparent comeback, after the backlash over the offending photo last May badly hurt her ability to work. “TMZ was reporting my show cancellations in real time,” she said of her stand-up tour. She also lost her longtime New Year’s Eve hosting gig on CNN. Unable to tour in the United States, Griffin went overseas, performing in 23 cities in 15 countries, she said. But because she was under investigation in the United States, she was “detained at every single airport,” she said. Griffin has not specified the dates of her upcoming shows in New York.
U2’s frontman, Bono, said this weekend that he was “furious” after a charity he co-founded was rocked by newly revived accusations that it had fostered in its Johannesburg office an atmosphere of bullying, abuse and, in one case, an attempt at sexual coercion. Bono apologized to the former employees of the charity, ONE, who have detailed on social media and in a British newspaper what they said were demoralizing treatment by managers at their office in the South African capital from late 2011 to 2015. He said the charity, which aims to “end extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa,” had failed to protect the workers. “I need to take some responsibility for that,” Bono said in a statement issued Saturday and published by The Mail on Sunday. Among the accusations, which first surfaced publicly last year: One employee said she had been demoted after refusing to have sex with a Tanzanian minister. Others told of being made to do domestic work at a manager’s house. Seven former employees have begun legal action against the charity, according to a spokesman for ONE. The revelations come as several charity organizations are grappling with accusations of misconduct. Oxfam, one of Britain’s largest charities, has acknowledged that staff members committed “sexual misconduct” in Haiti in 2011.