Joan Rivers has finally died. Hollywood Rests in Peace. She became very rich tearing people apart. It’s one thing to go after movie stars for fashion faux pas; it’s quite another to call for genocide in Gaza & justify it saying only those with the lowest IQs were being killed. This kind of talk doesn’t just skirt the edges of fascist-type thinking but plunges right in & wallows.
She represented a genre on TV including Howard Stern & Simon Cowell where demeaning others, especially women & vulnerable, was considered high hilarity. If you were fat or short or disabled or not surgically altered to perfection, she made you a butt of the cruelest jokes–& that includes a lot of us. Only those laughed who consider humiliation & cruelty a form of humor–the very type who’d make good concentration camp guards.
Comments from FB friends on the thread about Rivers last week clarified why she might have been so cruel toward others but there were no excuses offered for why she used humor to incite social hatred & intolerance. Most of us can’t honestly say we’ll miss her or regret her passing. But may she RIP anyway.