Chuck Knipp

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F. Charles "Chuck" Knipp
Chuck Knipp, a white male comedian, performs in blackface as Shirley Q. Liquor
Occupation	actor, comedian,Nurse,Minister.
Website Shirley Q. Liquor

Chuck Knipp is an American and Canadian (dual citizenship) drag comedian best known for his controversial alter egos, the black-face character "Shirley Q. Liquor" and "Betty Butterfield." His other characters are also what he calls "absurdist" - "Dr. Williams," a Valium-over-prescribing Texas family doctor, and "Narth Dakota Marge" who tends to run over "fat babies" in her Cadillac.

Knipp is a citizen of both the United States and Canada, active in the ACLU and Libertarian Party and was nominated as their candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000. (Texas, District 2). He is a commissioned notary public at large for the State of Kentucky.

[edit] Summary of characters

[edit] Shirley Q. Liquor

Knipp's best known character is Shirley Q. Liquor, a cariacature of a black southern woman. Knipp performs the character -- an Ebonics speaking, welfare-collecting mother of 19 children^[1] -- in blackface. Knipp speaks in a dialect of stereotypical broken English when he is performing as Shirley. Her conversations are often riddled with malapropisms, as when she suggests that her cat needs to get "sprayed", or when she goes shopping at "K-Mark" or 'Wal-Mark". The character attends Mount Holy Olive Second Baptist Zion Church of God in Christ of Resurrected Latter-Day Saints AME Hallelujah Jesus (a reference to historically African-American churches). She also references the Macademia Jubilation Congregation and the Reese's Peanut Butter Choir. On a few skits, she refers to herself as The Reverend Doctor Shirley Q. Liquor.

Liquor's best friend is the seven-foot-tall, 400 pound Watutsi Jenkins, who struggles with mental illness and needs to get "her head shocked" on a regular basis. Jenkins and Liquor are fans of Barry White as well as soap operas, which they refer to as "stories". Both are also fans of Schlitz and Colt 45 malt liquor and menthol cigarettes. Jenkins usually appears in "Happy Hour" skits which mimic a radio broadcast.

In addition to live performances, Knipp has produced several spoken-word CDs. Knipp's "Daily Ignunce" morning radio routine, usually 90 seconds long, is syndicated and heard on radio stations throughout the United States. Most recently, the character of Shirley Q. Liquor made an appearance in cartoon form on the pilot episode of Laugh Out, the first interactive, gay-themed comedy show. Shirley often addresses people by saying, "How you durrin'?"

Knipp's routines were consistently among the top downloaded comedy category mp3 files on mp3.com prior to its shutdown in 2003.

[edit] Betty Butterfield

Knipp spun off a new character in 1998: "Betty Butterfield" a large, drug addled, church hopping southern white woman. Butterfield's character was first referenced in a Shirley Q Liquor skit entitled "Telemarketing" in which Liquor mimics the sound of a white woman answering the phone: "mm'hellooo?"

This greeting would become the trademark of Butterfield's routine. Unlike most Liquor skits, which are audio, virtually all of the Butterfield skits are in the Quicktime video format. Betty Butterfield is most likely to be found discussing her never-ending search for a church she can fit into. She has visited Mormon, Catholic, Pentcostal, Episcopal, Buddhist, and even Scientology churches, none of which were to her liking. Chain smoking throughout, Betty is likely to burst into tears at any moment as she discusses her church escapades, need for better prescriptions, and her abusive double-amputee, Vietnam veteran husband, Jerry. Knipp frequently performs his live shows first as Betty Butterfield, then as Shirley Q. Liquor.

[edit] Controversy

(top) In response to activist Jasmyne Cannick's boycott of Knipp's act, which led to the cancellation of a West Hollywood show, promoters posted Cannick's e-mail address & telephone number (edited out for legal reasons) encouraging visitors "take a stand against Jasmyne". (bottom) A protest in Hartford, Conn. led to a canceled show at gay club Chez Est. In its place, a free comedy show called "Laugh Him Out of Town" was presented at a local high school.

[edit] Protests & Cancellations

• In 2002, a group of five protesters picketed a second sold-out New York City performance at the View, a gay club in the Chelsea neighborhood. Later that year, an appearance in Boston which was scheduled for October 18 was cancelled by order of Jerome Smith, acting as agent for Boston mayor Tom Menino.^[2] "I understand that the protesters thought that I might be going to do some sort of horrible offensive racist minstrel show,” Knipp said to the Daily Free Press, a publication of Boston University. “I just wish they’d seen it first and made up their own minds.”^[3]

• In 2004, Knipp was removed from the Divas Rock Atlanta concert following protests from gay non-profit groups.^[4] “I know the purpose of the event is to try to bring the community together," said Linda Ellis, executive director of the Atlanta Lesbian Cancer Initiative, "but there is nothing about [Knipp’s] performance that brings people together." The event lost $60,000 in revenue Knipp had offered to donate to "In The Life Atlanta," a gay black fundraiser.

• In 2005, another New York protest occurred when an appearance by the Shirley Q. Liquor character was slated to take place during celebrations for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. This time, the protest would prove to be successful; although paid in advance, Knipp did not do the show.^[5]

• In 2006, Knipp was banned from Eastern Kentucky University.^[6]

• In 2007, Jasmyne Cannick, an African-American and gay rights activist (who Knipp has publicly attacked several times) spearheaded a campaign against Liquor's act, encouraging nightclub owners to cancel Knipp's act. Cannick's movement brought nationwide attention to a previously unknown underground act, and Knipp's act was canceled in West Hollywood,^[7] Hartford, Conn.^[8][9][10]

• In February 2008, Knipp's home page featured Cannick's face superimposed on the body of African-American porn actress Norma Stitz. Knipp alleges that in response Cannick doctored the Wikipedia picture (above right) of Shirley Q., making the make-up as black as possible to disingenuously support her claims of "blackface." (It should be noted that the picture in the Wikipedia Commons was a snapshot taken at a concert in Louisville, Ky.)^[11] Knipp mentioned in a story with the Netherlands magazine, "Revu," that he was ready to retire Shirley Q. Liquor in 2006 and devote himself more to his nursing career, but because of the constant attention of the press, "the money and offers kept rolling in" and he is willing to perform as the character "until someone else is ready to do it."

[edit] Criticism

Since the 2007 boycott, there have been a number of articles in media that have taken issue with Knipp and the character.

• To Knipp's declaration that Liquor "was created in celebration of, not to downgrade, black women,"^[12] Cannick countered in her blog: "...it is not possible for Charles Knipp, a white man, to help heal years of mistreatment and racism at the hands of his people by putting on a wig, speaking Ebonics, and in blackface...There is nothing remotely uplifting about Knipp’s act and I wish people would stop defending his character with the tired argument that he’s trying to heal the nation. The only thing Knipp is trying to heal is the hole in his pocket by filling it with all of the money he makes off of degrading Black people."^[13]

• BET.com writer Jennifer Daniels wrote: "I have [no] intention of slinking off into some corner while some pseudo-bigot paints his face black and gets rich off spewing hurtful and embarrassing stereotypes about Black women...Knipp is free to celebrate Black women his way. That is certainly his right. But I have a right to publicly critique said celebration and encourage others not to participate."^[14] Daniels offered Knipp an interview with BET to set the record straight about his Shirley Q. Liquor character, but Knipp declined to participate.^[15]

• Shortly after the cancellation of Knipp's Hartford, Conn. show, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Helen Ubiñas of the Hartford Courant wrote of Liquor apologists: "Racist? Sexist? Homophobic? Absolutely not, just a little harmless satire."^[16]

[edit] Defense

• Entertainer RuPaul has long been a fan and supporter of Knipp. "Critics who think that Shirley Q. Liquor is offensive are idiots. Listen, I've been discriminated against by everybody in the world: gay people, black people, whatever. I know discrimination, I know racism, I know it very intimately. She's not racist, and if she were, she wouldn't be on my new CD."^[17] In her blog, RuPaul adds: "I am very sensitive to issues of racism, sexism and discrimination. I am a gay black man, who started my career as a professional transvestite in Georgia, twenty years ago."^[18]

• Boston Phoenix journalist Dan Kennedy awarded Boston government official Jerome Smith the dubious Muzzle Award for his part in leading to the cancellation of Knipp's scheduled 2004 Boston performance.^[19]

• Writer David Holthouse, anti-racist investigator for the "Intelligence Report" from the Southern Poverty Law Center, stated "Knipp is not a white supremacist" and that Knipp "invites the audience to sympathise with a single Black mother." An in-depth article was printed in the June, 2007 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine.

• The New York Blade criticized GLAAD for condemning Knipp, stating, "We commend GLAAD for condemning racism, but we question whether the organization’s goal is best attained by joining this particular fight."^[20]

• John Strausbaugh, author of Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture, explores Liquor's act in his book.

Knipp concedes that his performances as Shirley can make people uncomfortable. Knipp has said his show is about "lancing the boil of institutionized racism" and that "treating African Americans as if they have a disease is the real racism" because black people are "more than intelligent enough to discern the nuance" of his performances. He's also said that "many people thought that Harriet Beecher-Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was and still is perceived as racist, despite being the probable artistic genesis of emotional support against slavery in the 19th century."

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Shirley Q. Liquor, After Imus: A Black Face Comic Who Sings "12 Days of Kwanzaa"
• Shirley Q. Liquor at Southern Decadence
• Ban Shirley Q. Liquor