Kate McKinnon. Hello. How are you guys? The Carol Burnett Award is given to someone who, like its namesake, Carol Burnett, has given up. Decades of laughter, tears and a new sense of what's possible. So I would like to read a list of things that tonight's recipient, Ellen Generous, has personally given me.

Some of these are spiritual and some of them are pieces of clothing I got to keep after doing impressions of her on her talk show, a roadmap for a way to be funny that is grounded in an expression of joy.

Two pairs of Stan Smith sneakers, that's one of the clothes. A desire to bring everyone together by laughing about the things that we have in common. My best collared shirts.

A sense of self. I have to I have to explain that one more in in 1997, when Ellen's sitcom was at the height of its popularity, I was in my mother's basement lifting weights in front of the mirror and thinking and my gear.

And I was I still am. And. But that's a very scary thing to suddenly know about yourself.

It's sort of like doing 23 and me and discovering that you have alien DNA and the only thing that made it less scary was seeing Ellen on TV.

She risked her entire life and her entire career in order to tell the truth, and she suffered greatly for it. Of course, attitudes change, but only because brave people like Ellen jump into the fire to make them change.

And if I hadn't seen her on TV, I would have thought I could never be on TV. They don't let LGBTQ people on TV. And more than that. I would have gone on thinking that I was an alien and that I maybe didn't even have a right to be here.

So thank you, Ellen, for giving me a shot. A shot at a good life. And thank you also for the sweater with the picture of the baby goat on it.