Classic Joan Rivers bitching about Johnny Carson, who probably did more for her than any person in her career. His sin? Not continuing to prop her up after she stabbed him in the back, publicly and mean-spiritedly, as was her wont.
Many of the commenters laud her as a truth-telling, liberated and empowered woman, and her complaining and victim stance made them “love her even more!”
I feel the opposite. What’s with all the whinging? Took a long time to get on Carson? Because she’s a woman. Carson mad at her? Because she’s a woman. Even lightmen dis her. Why? Because she’s a woman. Everything bad that ever happened to her is not her fault, it’s all the woman haters ganging up on her.
I think she was just an unpleasant person, and frankly, she is not in the same league with most of the people she mentioned. That’s why she lagged behind them. She just wasn’t as talented as Carlin, Pryor, Cavett, Woody Allen etc. Most people can remember a classic bit (or several) any of those guys did. What did Rivers ever do? “Can we talk?” pluleeze.
Graceless, bitter, holding a decades old grudge over the fact she didn’t get asked to hang out with the boys. Boo f’in hoo.
I grew up in the ’60s-’70s and my main impression of Rivers was her low-brow, blue for the sake of shock-value, unfunny, mean-spirited hack. Carlin did obscenity, but there was an intelligent point behind it. Rivers was crude just for the shock value of “here’s a woman with a mouth like a long-shoreman, hahaha!” Rickles did insults, but he was also self-deprecating and his ribbing was at heart good-hearted so that most everyone got the joke and never felt he was taking low-blows at people: Rivers just came off as mean-spirited, crude and cheap-shot were her forte. To compare herself to Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce and bemoan she didn’t get the respect they did is just ridiculous. They weren’t just in another league, they were playing a different sport than Rivers.
I challenge anyone to quote a classic bit by Rivers that has stood up. Almost any entertainer lives or dies by how much people genuinely feel they like them, and that can’t be faked. Rivers just wasn’t a warm nor likable person, and that’s why she remained a C-D list celeb her entire career, nearly all her projects, movies (the few she was in) and TV shows were failures and she will never be mentioned in the same category as the comedians she mentions as “coming up” when she did. Her only “success” was a reality show which people could cringe at the absolute horrors of human beings her and her despicable daughter exhibited, horrible behaviour and revolting people being the stock-in-trade of reality TV.
And not just because she’s a woman. Elaine May, Imogene Coca, Lucille Ball, dozens of great women comediennes weren’t “held back” as Rivers claims, mainly because they had a unique and intelligent talent, something the crude, rude and hateful Joan lacked.