The Late Joan Rivers: 'Does this urn make my ash look fat?' — Page 12

Why was that "No problem!"? Someone bakes her a cake, but it's acceptable only if they take the word "lesbian" off? She says that to Drakes' face and he says "No problem"? I find that offensive as hell.

She took it with her to a holiday party that night.

" I don't know about that story, but I've never seen or heard her act in a homophobic manner."

It's a copy and paste from David Drakes' FB page, so I have no reason to doubt it. If Rivers wanted the word "lesbian" removed, why ask the givers to do it? That's incredibly ungrateful and tacky. Why not do it herself later, if it had to be done at all?

"Joan cornered our costume designer MachineDazzle Flower to make her something for her new act. (I think the deal fell through.)"

Another promise unkept. Drakes damns her with faint praise. I'm really baffled by his post.

Still, all these days later, I can not wrap my brain around how being mean about Joan Rivers is so upsetting her fans.

I got the message in the documentary that Joan would literally do ANYTHING for money. She said she would do commercials for ANYTHING. Her assistant says Joan would never say no to anything. What matters to her was the constant cash flow.

So on the one hand, I get why she said mean things about living, breathing human beings (celebrities or not) in her act more than she crafted something careful and hilarious about AIDS being chronic and the reaction she had while delivering Thanksgiving dinners for God's Love We Deliver. I loved the joke because it was about her and her own reactionary response. But the cruel kinds of jokes are cheap and easy and not very deep and her fans loved them.

The problem is that this is also the woman who trashed Adele for being fat and when called on it talked about how she was trying to "help" Adele.

So there are mean jokes in this thread. So what? Who cares? It's the coin of the realm.

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Updated On: 9/1/14 at 12:16 PM

Honest to Christ, you're not upsetting me!

Speaking of trashy and mean, I have never watched Celebrity Apprentice because life is too short, but I wanted to know what the BEEP was being bleeped out of Melissa's meltdown, as shown in the documentary. And the things Joan says to the other contestants are just sooooooo low and mean.
I mean!

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Joan was playing the game and she did it well. She won. I actually have only watched that show twice. The year Joan was on and the year Nene Leaks called Latoya Jackson Casper the ghost. It was fun and trashy low down television. There must be clips on the Y. Tube.

EDIT- I just saw you included that clip. Fun Sunday night trash.

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Updated On: 9/1/14 at 12:33 PM

I think the point of the cake story is not that she wanted the word "lesbian" edited out of her cake; it was that she wanted to take that part of the cake with her to another party.

But I cheered when she shot the heckler down. I laughed when she joked about Adele.

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Because she is fighting for her life. Because I am a fan. Because I am not able to embrace your point of view even if I do respect it.

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As someone who often (and unintentionally) goes against the grain when it comes to popular opinion, I ain't upset about anything. The sanctimony and condescension of the mob doesn't phase me, whether it's me getting screeched at because I think I can understand why some trannies don't like to be called trannies or because I see the irony in chastising people for making heartless jokes about a women whose lifeblood is (was?) fortified by making heartless jokes.

Maybe the people who need Joan to say the things they could never say you should just learn to say what they think they shouldn't say. Personally, I never needed Joan Rivers to make jokes for me about Brokeback Mountain or death or whenever I think his fodder for mockery. Maybe it's time to make your own fat jokes and rape jokes and whatever other gross jokes are in your brain that you apparently think are too terrible for you to say yourself, but become some kind of collective sigh of relief when someone like Joan Rivers says them for you. It may well BE time, because I don't think you're going to have Joan to make them for you much longer. You can always try to let someone else do it for you. I guess Kathy Griffin sort of falls in that vein, though she's not as awful as Joan Rivers is (yet). Bettyboy won't be able to turn to her, because he thinks she has no class.

But no matter what I say (or Namo says or anyone else who has expressed that Joan Rivers isn't their everything), there will be someone to pop in and wordily, if confusingly, explain why it's just different when it comes to Joan Rivers and how I'm just wrong, because something about this miserable, angry hosebeast strikes a nerve in some people that can not and will not be quarreled with.

Updated On: 9/1/14 at 02:03 PM

Joan has always been the staunchest of defenders of the gay community, and as my long Debbie/Shirley/Liza/Joan post showed, Joan stood up for the HIV/AIDS community while most celebrities in Los Angeles--and many of the posters on this very thread--were still in denial.

She took the lesbian slice to the other party to show off how proud she was to be an honorary Vampire Lesbian. Charles Busch's Vampire Lesbians of Sodom was a big thing then. And Joan and Charles became great friends after that. I remember one Rosh Hashanah when Charles showed up to the gay-and-lesbian synagogue with Joan in tow.

She was always one of us. And she always will be.

Joan always said that although she wasn't a lesbian herself, "If Lily Tomlin had shown up with a ring, who knows what might’ve happened? But it would’ve had to be a big ring."

She was also in a play off Broadway with Barbra Streisand before either of them were famous, in which Joan played a woman in love with Barbra.

I am proud to be a Joan Ranger.

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It's just that the offstage stuff is used as mitigating examples of the onstage stuff, is all.

I'm curious, and maybe somebody here knows, why if acting is her "sacred space" and in the documentary she's still obsessing about the way "Fun City" was received 40 years ago, Joan never mentions the Simon play?

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PJ-I remember that. She's genuinely a tolerant, sweet person who's used her fame for good. I hope that she can pull through.

Remember that episode of "Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best" where Lily Tomlin introduced Joan to one of her lesbian friends and they went on a date and kissed?

That was weird.

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