A comedian being booed for her criticism of Donald Trump flipped the crowd off as she walked off the stage Saturday at a charity event at TD Garden Saturday.
Wanda Sykes, a comedian from Los Angeles, called the president-elect a racist and a homophobe, among other things. She was booed and eventually gave the finger to the crowd as she left the stage at the annual Cam Neely Foundation benefit show Comics Come Home, and did not return.
"This is not the first time we’ve elected a racist, sexist, homophobic president," said Sykes, a black lesbian, according to a video from the show shared on social media.
Sam Degreene and Kelsey Mollergren, students at Berklee College of Music, were at the show. They're Trump supporters, and while they say some of the other comedians did make jokes about Donald Trump, Sykes in particular was not funny.
"It went off the rails pretty," said Degreene, while Mollergren said she’s a fan of Skyes but was disappointed in her after the show.
Other comedians at the show included Denis Leary and Nick DiPaolo.
DiPaolo admitted in an interview with the Boston Herald that he called someone in the audience a "Peabody Jew," which according to the Boston Globe bothered people in the audience, along with other parts of his set.
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“There is a fine line between comedy and hate speech,” George Hamblen told the Globe. “On the one hand, you had a very honest reaction from Wanda Sykes about what she’s going through [after the election] and she gets booed.”
Leary issued a statement saying that for 22 years, the event has never censored any performer at Comics Come Home, and each comedian is "free to speak their mind." He added that six of the eight comics "received big laughs and rapturous applause."
