Karma stops Joan Rivers's breathing

[PalJoey]

And then there was the time she had Zsa Zsa Gabor on with Dom DeLuise and Phyllis Diller--and she got Zsa Zsa to talk about how rough she thought Geraldo Rivera would be in bed--and then Geraldo walked onto the set!

[FindingNamo]

I don't mean to take anything away from the fact that Joan proudly speaks of doing the first AIDS benefit, which she did if you don't count the one Shirley McLaine did with The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in San Francisco.

[PalJoey]

That thing about Edgar never calling Johnny was not part of Joan's narrative until Carson attorney Henry Bushkin's biography of Johnny came out. That was the first she had heard of Edgar not having made the call.

[PalJoey]

Joan's first AIDS benefit was for APLA in March 1984. It was held at Studio One and it raised $45,000 for APLA, Shanti and Aid for AIDS.

That was before Gaetan Dugas died, before Michel Foucault died, before Ryan White was diagnosed, before Theatre Rhinosceros began doing its AIDS show.


In 1984, most of my friends were still in denial then.

[PalJoey]

But my all-time favorite appearance of a gay icon on Joan's talk show was when Joan had Bette Davis on--post-stroke Bette Davis:

[FindingNamo]

The major difference between Rivers and the transgressive comedy of Bruce, Sahl and Brooks is that Joan picked on the underdogs.

[PalJoey]

Lenny Bruce, who famously took Joan aside and said to to her, "Don't listen to the ass-holes. You're doing it right."

Here's Joan picking on the underdogs of The View. PalJoey was watching in the Green Room.

[FindingNamo]

The act Bruce was praising was an entirely different Joan. The one who mixed a little Phyllis Diller and a little Totie Fields and didn't kick other people when they were down. And cry when called out for it.

Look, it's fine to dismiss me as a "hater" when really all I am is somebody who truly appreciates good comedy but who thinks that good comedy has some sort of moral compass, an ethical center. Put aside the fact that Joan has spent the last half of her career being a viper toward others and then breaking down in tears if any of her targets call her out on it. That's just garden variety hypocrisy and she's not the first hypocrite in showbiz.

What I hate (her favorite word!) is her latter day beeline to outright cruelty. I DVRed her appearance on Seth Meyers a week or two ago and I had to turn it off after two minutes. Why? Because she was her usual petty, bilious bitch? Nope, although she was. I turned it off because she started with a riff on Anne Frank that was a COMPLETE rip-off of the famous Anne Frank bit created by the late great Frank Maya, who died of AIDS in 1995, and I just could NOT abide that. Sure, people lift material all the time, but they build on it and twist it into something of their own. Not Joan.

Maya's legendary riff was how living in cramped quarters in New York City really screws up New Yorkers' perspectives and he detailed visiting the Anne Frank House Museum and thinking "this place is HUGE and it's so cute the way you walk in through the bookshelf!" He later went on and said that he wouldn't have lasted three hours in those cramped quarters with his own family, stomping his feet on the stage and yelling "We're up HERE! We're up HERE!". The comedy was not at the expense of Anne Frank but was about his skewed perspective on the world.

Joan, on the other far less talented hand, immediately tried a variation on the Maya routine on the Meyers show and said how Anne Frank had it real good, compared to the cramped places people live in today. And Anne only wrote ONE book and why does she have such a great reputation when Joan has written many more? So basically, Joan took comedy that was thoughtful and well-crafted by somebody else and stripped the art off it, reducing it to something base that mocked a teenager who died in the Holocaust.

So now this is where somebody chimes in and says I'm over thinking it or borrows Joan's Get Out of Jail Free card ("It's just a JOKE!") but what I am saying is it's a bad joke that is nasty and mean-spirited and it was stolen from somebody who was a craftsman and created something that was off-beat and funny and quirky without having to mock a victim of the Holocaust.

The last 15 years have seen her getting more and more reprehensible and coasting on the rep of having been groundbreaking at one time. I have seen so, so, so many talented women comics perform live who may or may not be "lovely, gracious ladies" off-stage (I don't know or care to know, I'm just talking about their acts) who somehow manage to write cruelty-free comedy that is consistently hilarious. Perhaps they wouldn't be onstage today if Joan hadn't held open the door for them; the door KICKED open by Totie Fields, Moms Mabley and Phyllis Diller, which Joan walked through. There are all sorts of ways to be pioneers in a field and to be funny while still remaining humane. Humane and human. It's probably in that way that what Joan has done to herself surgically is a metaphor for her work.

And since Joan is the first one to call somebody a hypocrite (like the CNN woman who admitted to wearing leather shoes when she asked the perfectly logical question if Joan had been trying to tweak PETA by wearing fur in some dumb photo of hers), anybody who thinks the jokes in this thread that were written in the style of Joan Rivers go "too far" are really EFFING hypocrites.

Perhaps a We Love You Saint Joan thread would be better suited to such "sensitive" (one of Joan's least favorite words!) souls. This one, titled as it is, will continue to commemorate Joan in the her own imitable style.

Grow up.

[Justin2]

Poor Joan!

Anyone see her take on Florence Welch a few years back on Fashion Police?
VMAs I think it was..."Can anyone else see her?!"

Recently got a copy of her Can We Talk routine on vinyl. VERY VERY funny.
Have (had?!) tickets to see her in London in October.

[~~tiny3~~]

methinks namo is quite in love with our little joanie.

[Jane2]

I hope she comes out of this with no permanent injury.

[PalJoey]

I had a dream last night. Joan came to me. She was coming from Heaven but she wasn't dead yet. She brought Chinese food. The Moo Shoo Pork was very good, and she said "And up here, it's kosher!"

She said, "Let them make jokes. For godsake, let them make MEAN jokes. I wouldn't have it any other way. Let them make mean jokes even if their jokes are not funny. That's how I want to go. I don't want to go as Saint Joan--that girl was crazy! I want to go in controversy. There's only one thing that could kill me--well, I guess I'll be already dead--there's only one think that would be total and complete anathema to me: And that would be if they ignore me. Have some of the General Tsao's--it's very good, not gloppy. Made by General Tsao himself."

And then she disappeared, to get back to her medically induced coma at Mount Sinai, and said, "Let them be mean. Let them be unfunny. As long as they don't say 'kike,' it's all good."

And with that, I woke up. I know it was a dream but, oddly, there was a fortune cookie by my bedside.

[Reginald Tresilian]

^ Love it.

[Jane2]

I love Namo but I don't agree with his take on Joan.

[Liza's Headband]

That's because Namo believes in having "ethics," or a "moral compass," when it comes to stand up comedy... But not when it comes to posting on a message board. A true hypocrite, indeed.

[PalJoey]

Oh shut up.

[Liza's Headband]

I will not. No ignorant jackass, who is quite abusive to those with differing opinions, is going to be a massive b!tch to a woman fighting for her life under the auspices of moral and ethical righteousness and get away with it. It's hypocritical BS and you can shut your trap for defending that.

We fall on the same side of many issues, but you just cannot accept that and feel the bitter compulsion of snapping back. It's sad and pathetic. Hope you eventually have a change of heart.

[PalJoey]

Do shut up. Really.

[Jane2]

"No ignorant jackass, who is quite abusive to those with differing opinions....."

no. just no. It depends on who it is with the differing opinions. Namo and I have differing opinions on a few subjects but we have a mutual respect.

[Kristie-K2]

On the positive side, Thank You Pal Joey for the Bette Davis Clip. She was my favorite Actress when I was a child. Now that was a Star...

Blessings to Joan Rivers...

[SNAFU]

Liza, please, just go the f*ck away. You are annoying and becoming quite tiresome.

[Borstalboy]

Headband, be gone! Every word you type is absolutely greasy with hypocrisy and no one on this board takes you seriously. GO!

[FindingNamo]

My long post was to point out that this is something I have given a lot of thought to, it's not just some position I picked and will stick to because I picked it. I have seen many, many, many more comedy shows than I have ever seen musicals (there's another hint for you Headcase; and you really must take everybody's advice to shut up about ethics).

And naturally, when my friend PalJoey wrote, "Let them make mean jokes even if their jokes are not funny," I thought, "Then that makes my jokes JUST LIKE JOAN'S! Ohhhh! You don't know! It was just…"

I will say this for Joan, her work absolutely parallels the turn toward the mean and cruel that began in the United States when Reagan was elected and has worsened every year since. And after all that, stealing from Frank Maya.

[FindingNamo]

"No ignorant jackass," wrote the person who spent so much energy trying to intimidate Chris Caggiano for how many months?

[Jordan Catalano]

Is this the same Headband who promised to never post here again and immediately started posting again? Or is this another equally annoying Headband? Because the Headband who swore that he would never be seen on this message board ever again but just look on from afar couldn't possibly be the same one who never stops posting here still. Can it?

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Can we ignore IT? This is at least the second thread this week that I've read that was going fine until it showed up.
Honestly, I don't think Rivers--whether she's dead, dying or well--would want to be remembered any other way. I don't see any jokes on here that she herself wouldn't say. If anything, she'd probably be annoyed she didn't think of it first. I think her jokes are lazy, but once in a while she'll say something absolutely hilarious, it usually involves some version of referring to Lea Michelle as a cee you next Tuesday. Any updates on her condition?