Wanda Sykes weighs in on the Emmys, Dr. Laura, Sarah Palin, Ken Mehlman and much more!

Kathy Griffin better watch out! Wanda Sykes had Larry King in absolute stitches during her appearance on his CNN show this week. It was a thoroughly enjoyable hour and I’ve transcribed some of the highlights for you.

On the Emmys (Wanda is up for two. She lost in one category at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmys but has another chance to win on Sunday): “You get all dressed up and you go and people say, ‘Oh, I’m just so honored to be nominated’ but really, you want to win. It feels good to win. You want to walk around with your big, gold trophy and you want to shove it in people’s faces and you want to get up and thank people, you want to do all that. So when they didn’t call my name [at the Creative Arts Emmys] it would have been better for me if they would have said, ‘And the winner is Wanda Sykes.. Not you!” I would have felt better. If you’re going to kick me in the teeth, kick me in the teeth.”

On for GOP political operative Ken Mehlman coming out: “He’s family, I didn’t know. Here’s this guy, he says it’s taken him like 43 years to be comfortable with himself which I understand. It took me awhile to publicly come out but when he was in the Bush administration, they knew he was gay and he had to sit there and listen to all this anti-gay stuff. I also believe the people in the room, they weren’t anti-gay, they were pro-votes. … [Mehlman] probably took so many of those showers that, you know, rape victims take, they’re scrubbing themselves. He probably had a lot of those kind of showers.”

On why it took her so long to come out: “I have parents who are still alive that’s why and you suppress all that, you bury it to try and fit in. I’m 46 so back then, religion everything else. You weren’t exposed to gay people. My father was in the service.” She told her parents during “a long distance phone call. We’re talking like coast to coast. You always want to give your family like a six hour plane ride before they can get to you [laughs]. … I know without a doubt my family, they love me, we’re working on it.”

On former VP candidate Sarah Palin: “She’s smart in the way that she’s an opportunist but she’s not smart enough to pull it off. All you have to do is just give her enough rope and she’s going to say something stupid. She’s making up words. … If someone put an earpiece in her ear and would just say, ‘Stop!’ she would go far. She doesn’t know how to stop. She says the things that people in that little area want to hear. There’s a group who feel very connected to her and you have to give her credit for that. But when you listen to it, a lot of it doesn’t make any sense.”

On Dr. Laura Schelessinger controversy: “Here’s the shocking thing: I did not know that black people actually listened to Dr. Laura. Black people don’t listen to Dr. Laura! That’s a white people thing. Dr. Laura’s not even a psychologist, she’s not a psychiatrist, she’s a physiologist. So you make better time getting therapy from your masseuse.. I think Dr. Laura was shocked and she was really ticked off that this black woman called into her show. That’s why she went off. … It didn’t make any sense at all … She’s probably been saying the N word for years but this is the first time that a black person was actually listening to her show. I’ve been black for 46 years and in my entire 46 years I have never heard one of my black friends start a conversation with: “You know, I was listening to Dr. Laura today.”