Guess who’s coming to dinner? D-List celebrity Kathy Griffin has secured an invitation to Nerd Prom – the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. What better publicity move could she have made to kick off her comeback from the tone-deaf public relations blunder she made in 2017? She famously held up a mask of the bloody head of President Trump, in a photo,  as though she had beheaded the leader of the free world and then cried when few were supportive of such a stunt. The hit to her career was immediate.

Griffin announced via Twitter, naturally, that she has been extended an invitation by the Washington Blade, “America’s LGBT News Source”.  Her whole shtick revolves around her support from the LGBT community, so this makes sense. She is desperate to kickstart her career after proclaiming that the immediate backlash she experienced from her woefully off the mark protest of President Trump ended it. I think the biggest surprise was that she actually had a career.  Initially, Griffin volunteered to host the dinner free of charge.

Honored that I'll be attending the White House Correspondents Dinner for the first time this year. I'll be the guest of the great team at the @WashBlade @losangelesblade!

— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) March 23, 2018

The White House has not confirmed President Trump’s attendance at this year’s event. He declined to participate last year after a contentious start with the White House press corps but this year he attended the Gridiron Club event, so who knows?  He famously was the target of President Obama’s jabs during the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, as a private citizen, after all.  Do you think any slings and arrows Trump might take at Griffin from the dais would get the same roaring approval from the crowd that Obama’s got towards Trump? Color me skeptical.

It is typical of a Hollywood celebrity to try and capitalize on political statements, especially in Trump’s America, but Griffin’s attack is particularly ill-founded.  For a supporter of the LGBT community, she sure doesn’t recognize a little bit of history when it is made.  When Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination as the party’s candidate for president at the RNC in summer 2016, he became the first Republican presidential nominee to enthusiastically voice support for the LGBT community.

“Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist targeted our LGBT community. As your President, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBT citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology. To protect us from terrorism, we need to focus on three things.”

Trump pledged to protect LGBT citizens from violence, specifically “hateful foreign ideology” and Griffin thought it would be bold and edgy to behead the president as a political statement, the very action used by the most deranged of our enemies in real life.  Given that Griffin toured around the country at that time for paying gigs in middle America – flyover country that elected Trump – it is amazing that she was still so wrapped up in her Hollywood bubble that she didn’t understand her audience or from where her paychecks were coming.

Griffin apologized for the picture because of the backlash. Even CNN fired her – if a Trump hater is fired by CNN, you know it was bad. Then she withdrew her apology. She doesn’t even own the rights to the photo, the photographer does, and so far he hasn’t accepted offers to sell.  She wore the mask at a Los Angeles drag show performance last October in her first appearance after the brouhaha.

Maybe she will wear the mask to get a bit of camera time at Nerd Prom this year, whether Trump is present or not. It’s not like everyone is there to enjoy the meal.