Happy birthday to Wanda Sykes!

Don’t you just love that Wanda Sykes is one of the three hosts of the Academy Awards this year?

I don’t know when she has not been very smart and funny so my hopes are high.

Today is Wanda’s 58th birthday and I am taking you back to a blog post I did in March 2009 at the Human Rights Campaign dinner. She had come out very publicly shortly before the Nov. 4 election after being very private about her personal life up until then.

I got the chance to chat with before the dinner started.

“There really wasn’t a big decision behind it,” she said of her coming out. “I was in Vegas working at Planet Hollywood and I knew there was a national (Proposition 8) rally going on and I wanted toi be a part of the rally. I was just in the crowd with everyone else and I guess the word got around that I was there in the crowd and they asked if I would come up and say a few words. And you know the rest.”

I wondered how her life has changed since being out “because we all love you even more now.”

“Oh thank you!” she said. “I still feel like me, maybe a little free, a little more liberated – more fired up. It’s great.”