Joan Rivers Has Died

Snark is a good word for it...her humor was callous and shallow. That she was able to make a career out of this says something not too cool about us.

I liked him when he was being quiet n thoughtful.
I did not like the screaming, nor the acting weird.


Is that Abby Hoffman, the communist ?
I gave him the finger around 1971.





David

No, it was Hoffman the actor who OD on heroin, so they say.

I don t recognize. What was his first name ?

Philip Seymour Hoffman

I see. I don t think I knew him.

It's not factual. He had a heart attack himeself, with the attending depression that comes with it.

As for your comment that they moved her to a "private" room, aren't the vast majority of room private nowadays?

With all the ins and outs of the hospital wally has done, it's been over 20 years since he had someone else in the room with him.

I had very mixed feelings about Joan Rivers. Even in her earlier days, I found her too mean, particularly when she relentlessly made Elizabeth Taylor the butt of jokes when she gained a lot of weight. There was nothing good-spirited about it, and she made me feel more angry than anything else. And that sort of ridicule, particularly, of other women, was part of her stock in trade throughout her entire career. I never saw her as any sort of trail blazer for women stand-up comics, I think Phyllis Diller did that, certainly on TV. And I think most of her major career setbacks--particularly her falling out with Johnny Carson--were due to her own lousy judgment and overreaching ambition.

That said, I think she was also a very funny woman, who developed her own unique style, and one who found an astonishing array of outlets to promote herself to an ever-increasing fan base--she wrote 11 books, sold over $10 million worth of her merchandise yearly on QVC, created the format for red carpet interviews, did the Fashion Police show, then started a reality show with her daughter Melissa, then a Web cast interview show, all in addition to continuing her stand-up performances, and she had new ventures lined up, right until the time she went into that clinic for the ill-fated endoscopy.

I found the documentary "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" very revealing, and it helped me to appreciate her in a new light. She was driven to work, really driven, both so she could continue to maintain a very posh lifestyle, but also because she needed to find acceptance from an audience, and she needed to prove she still found that acceptance, over and over again. Her work ethic, and her stamina and energy, were incredible. She was about 77 when the documentary was made, and the schedule she maintained was staggering.

This lady really lived to work. And I'm glad. for her, she was able to work, full steam, right up until the end. The cruelest blow for her would have been if she had awakened from her coma too significantly disabled to continue to work. I think she left this world just the way she wanted to--still working and performing, with her appointment book still filled with future bookings and projects.

I'm not sure I fully understand the tremendous amount of publicity her death has generated, since I thought of her as more of an often abrasive "character "--albeit a funny one--than a beloved cultural figure. I think her sheer resilience, and her ability to persevere and diversify, are inspiring, particularly in a career that spanned 60 decades and that had many twists and turns.

I used to enjoy watching her on QVC, she was quite funny, particularly when she first started selling her costume jewelry, and while I later found too much of her jewelry that I purchased overpriced and poorly made--clips fell off the backs of earrings, stones fell out of settings, etc. --I eventually purchased some really great necklaces, and a pin or two, from her early line, on e-bay, at a fraction of the QVC price, that I really love, and those are my personal mementos of her now, my little links to her. And they are just as unique and timeless as she was, and they make me feel really good when I wear them, and that's a nice way to remember her too.

No, all the hospital rooms I've visited in the last decade, in several hospitals, have not been private rooms.

They moved her out of the ICU to a private room because there was nothing more they could medically do for her--she was just being maintained on life support, and had apparently sustained too much brain damage to ever regain consciousness again, or to function without life support--and she could afford a private room. The private room allowed close friends and family time, and a place, to say their goodbyes alone with her before they pulled the plug on the life support.

I'm of the impression she essentially died in the endoscopy clinic, but. at the hospital, they put her on life-support, and tried a medically induced coma, in the hope she would show some improvement in brain function when they took her out of that coma, but she didn't. I'm not sure that they would routinely do this sort of thing with another 81 year old who wasn't a celebrity, who had gone into both respiratory and cardiac arrest, and couldn't be resuscitated. It sounds like they did everything they could to
try to keep her alive.

I think the endoscopy clinic has a lot of explaining to do in terms of what went wrong in the case of Rivers. They've now gotten such world wide negative publicity, they might as well close up shop now.

And yet when people are on their deathbeds one of the top 5 things they say is " I wish I had not worked so much".

The gays loving her is a big part of it, that bitchy camp thing Rivers had going on is big with them. There was a good piece on this on slate yesterday I think it was.

People regret working so much only if they really didn't love their work, and only if it kept them from doing other things. She really did love her work, it afforded her what she said was an "amazing life", it also helped to keep her closely involved with her daughter and even with her grandson. She made it quite clear she never wanted to retire, and that her life had been "a great ride."

You just don't understand what Joan Rivers was really like--performing was part of her life blood--she thrived on making people laugh. She would have been the last person in the world to say, "I wish I had not worked so much."

She always had a large gay following, but I don't think that explains the enormous amount of coverage her life and career is now getting. It's really
astounding--hour after hour on TV alone. She probably would have loved it, and, maybe, even been a bit surprised by it.

and yet you claim to be a genius. go figger...

...although not nearly as f'ed up as you are.
Between the several threads Miller has begun on Ms.Rivers and your unending obsession with Mr.Williams and suicide, I find the both of you rather screwy.

Joan Rivers gave millions of people around the world laughs and moments to stop and think as well. She could rub some folk the wrong way, but, that is part of being a superb humor-giver. She was one of the good ones and will be missed.

You are right on all points!

U have EVIDENCE of this??

I don t think u do.





David

Its been a while since I took the Mensa tests, 1977,
but I 'm pretty sure that thay did not have his name on them.





David

You have something against making money? She created, and earned, her own success.

At 81, she was still as sharp as a tack, and able to earn all that money by working for it. She commuted weekly between NY and California, flew all over the place to do her stand-up act, and was just on a book promotional tour for her 11th book. That was in addition to her reality show with Melissa, her appearances on QVC, and her gig on Fashion Police. This was the life she enjoyed, and, quite unlike Robin Williams, not one she had any intention of ending anytime soon.

She also believed in giving back--she was continually raising and giving millions to charity. One of the reasons she was so popular with gays was because of her strong early support for God's Love We Deliver--a service that provided free delivery of cooked meals to home-bound AIDS sufferers, starting in the mid-eighties, when people were still frightened to go anywhere near AIDS patients And she raised millions and millions for that charity alone, which she said was more recently providing almost 5,000 free meals a day to all sorts of homebound individuals. She also paid for private school tuition for her employees. She was generous toward others in her private life.

All entertainers and performers, in any area, have an ego, and need a positive audience reaction to keep them going--that's what that business is like. There's nothing unsavory about it, or about the money they earn doing it, while bringing pleasure and enjoyment to other people's lives. And there's nothing "quintessentially American" or f--ked up about doing that.

You just seem to enjoy being contemptuous of people, admired by others, with talents you could never match, let alone parlay into a very lucrative career.

Just on a side note, isn't it your birthday "tomorrow?"

Any person that can put people down for a living, "and" get it thrown back at her, ie) face-lifts, but still survive take in on her chin and not crumble and continue affords some merit.

I watched her speak to her daughter via a video shared and it was evident she had a heart.

People either liked her or they didn't. But ,I agree, that she died the way she would have wanted to and was ready for it "when that time came". And, attempted to give her wisdom and love prior to that happening.

As women do.