The following is a list of people who have publicly come out in support of Charles Knipp's character Shirley Q. Liquor or who have booked him to perform at their venue, home, or business.
RUPAUL
Black dragqueen RuPaul defended Knipps last year on a gay radio show saying, “I love it. People really need to take a chill pill and people really aren’t sophisticated enough to know that when a person is coming from a place of love as opposed to coming from a place of hate. Shirley Q. Liquor is so clearly coming from a place of love.”
SELA WARD
In 2005, the actress Sela Ward hired Knipp to perform at a
fiftieth-birthday party she threw in New Orleans for her husband.
RONNIE DUNN
In 2006, country-music star Ronnie Dunn arranged to have
Shirley Q. waiting on the tour bus after a Brooks and Dunn concert
in Atlanta to surprise Dunn's wife on her birthday. "Mrs. Dunn is a
big fan of mine," Knipp says. "Oooh, lawdy, we had ourselves a
time."
DAN KENNEDY
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
DAVID HOLTHOUSE
Writer David Holthouse, of the "Intelligence Report" from the
Southern Poverty Law Center, has stated "Knipp is not a white
supremacist" and that Knipp "invites the audience to sympathize with a
single Black mother."
THE NEW YORK BLADE
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."
JOHN STRAUSBAUGH
John Strausbaugh, author of Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture, defends Liquor's act in his book.
