I don’t know, maybe there was a brief period of time after I was first introduced to Joan Rivers via my television set that I didn’t despise her. I may have thought she was somewhat charming and funny and irreverent. I can’t remember. All I really remember is the plastic surgery and the vanity and the right-wing politics and the palling around with the nation’s most famous Birther, Donald Trump.
Peggy Noonan explains why I hated Joan Rivers better than I ever could. If you want me to hate you, try making a career talking about other people’s clothes.
I recognize that Joan Rivers touched a lot of people in a lot of ways and she can’t be reduced to a Ronald Reagan-adoring, Steve Forbes’ chateau vacationing, best-buddy of Peggy Noonan. But, to me, she was the worst of the worst.
I held her in the highest contempt.
I’m not pleased that she has died, but I have absolutely nothing positive to say about her life or career. I thought she was a dreadful human being.
Can’t read all of that. I’ve actually been surprised by the outpouring of emotion. I would have expected a somewhat less favorable reaction.
Was she funny at all when she was the vacation host for Carson? Because I don’t remember those years at all.
These big comics, Rivers, Robin Williams, etc, all have a short lifespan for funny. I listened to Rivers occasionally. She did have some funny lines, and she was a self-deprecating comic, which is always fun to listen to – better to run yourself down than to make jokes about other groups (remember the Polish joke phase of the 60s?). But listening to a lot of her stuff is not edifying.
Same with Robin Williams. He had gotten to the point where he was kind of a juke box of impressions, and they just came at a blistering pace, so fast that it was kind of wearying. Apparently, on movie sets, he started off being popular, but after 2 weeks, he was avoided. Because his surface schtick seems to be what there was. Kind of concerning really.
What an odd comparison. Would be like putting Groucho Marx and Jack E. Leonard in the same category. Possibly worse since Leonard didn’t espouse any political party or liberal/conservative affiliation and they were both Jewish, but like Rivers didn’t perform in movies or have a TV sitcom.
Williams didn’t even do stand-comedy for something like sixteen years in the middle of his career.
I call it ‘always on’. By all appearances, Williams had a really bad case. My brother suffered from it, and it was painful to be around him.
How someone could write that article and think they were writing a complimentary vision is beyond me to understand.
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Not according to his good friend Oliver Sacks
Was listening to some people relate anecdotes and in their memories Williams was the exact opposite of always on, quiet almost shy then go on stage and boom.
Also, Williams was a stand-up guy. Tried to give back as much as he could, even to no-names. He also walked the picket line with various groups. He was by all accounts a real liberal. Not the phony baloney type.
Was from a gentlemen who is an event booker. He said he never booked Robin Williams but came close enough one time that he received a copy of his rider – the demands that talent will make from a promoter and/or venue in addition to their salary. Robin William’s rider included a requirement that the promoter hire some homeless people to work the event.
http://brianlord.org/2014/08/12/a-little-known-robin-williams-story/
I heard the same about Jay Leno. They said he never forgot what it was like to be a struggling no name comic in the Boston clubs and be brushed aside by the big names.
Among the car community in SoCal Leno is a freaking hero. Always takes time to look at a persons car, even the most mundane. If he sees a bunch of car people he pulls over and chats them up.
If you like cars, he knows how you feel.
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Her recent political comments about Palestinians deserving to die because they started the war ring in my ears. No, I haven’t missed her either.
She was an impersonation of Joan Rivers and, above all, super gorgeous!
Super-gorgeous. YMMV.
She was an 80 YO woman trying to look 60. She died because she was having another plastic surgery. I didn’t consider her attractive. She was a woman pretending to be attractive.
Excuse me for missing the irony. After all it wasn’t very obvious. My bad.
Joan Rivers, the comic for those who find Jackie Mason too intellectual.
Thank you for saying this. I lost it for her when she became an apologist for the Reagans, and Nancy’s close pal. “No scared cows”? Yeah, except Mr. and Mrs. Gipper.
Sounds about right. I thought it was more because I am young and never really knew of her except for her gossipy red carpet trash. Guess not. Hooray.
Didn’t see this:
Joan Rivers Says Barack Obama Is Gay, Uses Trans Slur Against Michelle Obama
Can’t recall ever enjoying her comedic edge. Too mean spirited for my funny bone.
Interesting to note that she and Lauren Bacall were both Jewish and Brooklyn girls. What a difference. One a lifelong and proud liberal and the other a Republican. One that had so many nips and tucks over so many years that her eyes disappeared. The other
Lauren Bacall was one Hell of a Lady.
“All they had was French Revolution outfits, so we took them, got back to our rooms, and Joan and I wrote a play on what we announced were French revolutionary themes.”
Good thing for Joan and Peggy that this was only play acting, because I’m not sure they would have kept their plastic heads for very long.
After being abused for her appearance, she made a career out of abusing other people’s appearances. I wonder how many eating disorders she inspired?
I thought she was awful and I didn’t even know about the political stuff. I just thought her comedy was mean-spirited. Don Rickles made a career of insult humor and, while I was never a huge fan of his, it was always roast-type stuff. The victim was sort of in on the joke. Joan Rivers was mostly just nasty.
Never liked her. I admired her hustle (still racing from job to job at age 81) and her toughness at managing to break through as a female comic in the 1960s (can you imagine the crap she must’ve had to deal with?). But she punched down, a lot, at people who never hurt her or did anything to deserve it. She exploited the hell out of her employees (her reality show staff was being paid 1/6 of union rates), and for all her glass-ceiling breaking she did almost nothing to promote or mentor other woman comics (seeing them as competition for the same slots) – notice how all the praise she’s getting from other comediennes talk about how “inspirational” she was but none of them describe her as helpful or even particularly friendly.
Her vaunted truth-telling integrity was largely doing things like standing up and calling Liz Taylor fat. How brave! How pathbreaking! Her final mini-controversy was when she called Obama gay and said Michelle was actually a transvestite.
Yeah, not really feeling the loss here.
Not a trivial observation:
The best in any professional field who have achieved personal success are generous towards peers and those who are younger.
This is a near universal issue in the corporate world, and perhaps other fields as well.
Still? Years ago recall being told about a newly retired supervisor of a small support staff unit who by then were in their late forties and early fifties. Her employees spoke highly of her until in a moment of honesty they all conceded that the supervisor hadn’t allowed any of them to increase or improve their skills. Suggested to them that the old-fashioned style for a women that managed to get one rung up on the corporate ladder was to keep her staff down so that she always looked good. The feminist style was to help the staff look good enough that they deserved promotions and if they were promoted, the supervisor had to be promoted as well. How they wished feminism had arrived soon enough for them.
Yes, recent analysis that companies with women in top positions are no more likely than those without to promote women up.
Guess that’s confirmation of what I’ve long suspected. Women aren’t all that different from men. Some with power are nurturant, teachers, mentors, and some aren’t. I was fortunate to have generous mentors and role models (all males because there weren’t any women in the field at that time) and followed their lead. Was also fortunate later to work with some smart and generous professional women.
Meh.
I’ll always assume women are better than men, and I’m a guy.
What flows between both, especially in the highest echelons, is sociopathy. People who got theirs and will do everything in their power to keep getting it, even if they’re taking it from others.
Not all men at the highest echelons are sociopaths. But doubt that the proportion of women that reach the highest echelons would differ much from that of men.
But I wasn’t speaking of men and women with clinical pathologies. Nor criminal behaviors which are much higher among men. Merely how they function when in professional positions of power over others. Many such women even favor male subordinates over female subordinates, but that male bias may be less than it is for male bosses. Will take a few more generations for that to become clear.
Right.
Men have an easier time getting to the top. Women have a tougher time. Hell, women who make it to the top may even be more likely to be sociopathic, since some decent men may luck out/nepotism out their way to the top. Or work hard and not be a sociopath. Women, on the other hand, may need the sociopathy just to deal with all of the bullshit and finagling required to get up there.
That said, not everyone at the top is a piece of shit. And ultimately, sociopaths aren’t inherently evil people. Some even do a very good job pretending to be empathetic and walk the walk, just because. Sociopaths exist for a reason, but they need to be kept in check.
I’d classify it as you did, as people who make it and then act as role models and mentors. These are the good people.
There are others who get up there and immediately pull the ladder up, set it on fire, and then loosen the ledge so no one else can compete with them.
I try to give those who work in the arts a pass on their politics to some extent, and concentrate on their work. I thought Rivers was hilarious on Carson. Her wit spared no one, especially herself. RIP
Agreed, but her later work was just mean. She should have retired and just done charity gigs with the old material.
Most of all, she should have aged gracefully like Betty white.
yeh, the meanness. not attractive or funny
Joan Rivers had bad fashion sense.
I fully recognize that she was indeed a pioneer for women in stand-up. I think the doors she opened is a positive thing about her life and career.
Gracie Allen was doing stand-up decades earlier. And Phyllis Diller was doing her act in the 1950s. (Acceptance of women as comedians likely given a huge boost by the popularity of “I Love Lucy.) Totie Fields was a contemporary of Rivers.
And Jackie Moms Mabley! 1894-1975 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moms_Mabley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFp-oEWIiz8 The Original Queen of Comegy
My bad. It’s such a short list that I have no excuse for not including Moms. And Minnie Pearl. While she didn’t do much strictly stand-up, Carol Burnett is a comedian and was often shared her spotlight with others.
Glad you mentioned Carol. I am finding all this talk of Joan having broken through the glass ceiling weird when two of the most popular shows in my early years were The Lucy Show (the in-color sit com long after Ricky had been Ricardoed away, with Lucy as a single mom of two older teens) and The Carol Burnett Show.
I also have to agree with the consensus here that there was nothing attractive about Rivers. On the few occasions I watched her it was clear her schtick was gossiping about people and putting them down for trivial shit, such as what clothes they wore. Basically she was comedy for people with subscriptions to supermarket tabloids – and I despise people who think like that. Think of her as the older version of the villains in “Mean Girls”. I did chuckle once or twice when she treated herself to the same put-downs, but even that self-deprecation just showed how vile her mean streak really was.
Contrast her to Lucy and Carol and the humor could not be more different.
Joan Rivers has been irrelevant for decades.
Everyone dies.
See ya Joan. If there’s a hell, say hi to Reagan for me.