At CNN, the biggest annual tradition is its several-hours-long New Year’s Eve celebration. It used to star prime-time news anchor Anderson Cooper and one of his bosom buddies, comedienne Kathy Griffin, whose schtick mainly involved saying and doing supposedly outrageous things in order to ruffle the feathers of the supposedly sober, serious, and easily embarrassed Anderson.

He mocked the idea that America electing its first black president (this was, remember, 2011) amounted to anything special. “Is it progress? No! It’s trivia.”
Then, in 2017, Kathy posted online that instantly notorious photo of herself holding what looked like the bloody severed head of Donald Trump, and was instantly and unceremoniously dumped not only from CNN but from her close friendship with Cooper. She was replaced by another Cooper chum, TV host Andy Cohen, who produces the Real Housewives programs and other garbage on the Bravo network.
CNN host Don Lemon also used to be a frequent face on the New Year’s show, until he, too, was fired last year; these days, Richard Quest, yet another CNN host, who should have been fired in 2008 after he was arrested in Central Park in the middle of the night with, as the New York Post put it at the time, “some drugs in his pocket, a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals, and a sex toy in his boot,” continues to appear on the New Year’s program, often in preposterous costumes.
Aside from Kathy Griffin, who is the quintessential fag hag, all of the above-named individuals are openly gay, and watching the proceedings on New Year’s Eve always feels like walking into a gay bar packed with annoying drunken idiots who think they’re delightful and witty.
This year, however, CNN’s New Year bash was worth watching for one reason: the comedienne Whitney Cummings, who showed up at 10 PM Eastern time to promote her new stand-up special. Standing in the rain at Times Square alongside Andy and Anderson, she announced that she would be roasting the year 2024...