"... and yet in a way she must have: You don’t have strangers light up at the sight of you without knowing you have done something. But we should try to honor and celebrate the virtues and gifts of people while they’re alive, and can see it."
Writes Peggy Noonan in a column that has a lot of interesting details in it, such as the fact that Joan Rivers was a big Reagan fan and that one time Peggy and Joan crash landed in a Steve Forbes hot-air balloon in a field in France and the farmer toasted them for what the Americans did on D-Day and that Joan preferred mob-run Las Vegas because they kept the hotel lobbies clear of men in shorts.
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Some pundit on Twitter said that you shouldn't send flowers. You should just make fun of some asshole in her honor.
such as the fact that Joan Rivers was a big Reagan fan
Oh, yeah, Noonan very much wanted to insert that Rivers was a Republican and that she disliked Obama. But there is a celebrity wife swap episode with Melissa and Bristol(Palin) swapping where Joan says she is a Democrat. Much like a lot of us, I don't think Joan liked what has become of the Democratic party today. I think she was right smack in the middle without labels but trying to be honest and good.
"I am not sure she ever felt accepted by the showbiz elite, or any elite. She was too raw, didn’t respect certain conventions, wasn’t careful, didn’t pretend to a false dignity. She took the celebrated and powerful down a peg. Her wit was broad and spoofing—she would play the fool—but it was also subversive and transgressive. People who weren’t powerful or well-known saw and understood what she was doing.
She thought a lot about how things work and what they mean."
Well, I will say it before I'm gone when it won't matter and I can't appreciate it: This sounds like me.
I am intelligent, good-looking, admired by men, loved by women, and blessed with a large *&^*.
I thank myself (again) for saying so.
You must have loved that 'men in shorts' comment, Prof!
Feels oddly like a very personal loss.
I didn't love Joan.
A good line now and then is what you want, but it won't matter who came up with it.
That was a great column. I agree with her about Las Vegas. I was there in the 50s when Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo was going strong. "Casino" is a good movie about that time.
You could be a Democrat and be a big Reagan fan.
Joan preferred mob-run Las Vegas because they kept the hotel lobbies clear of men in shorts.
LOL. The mob is so formalist. Here is Steve Martin mowing the grass in a suit.
Reagan was a big Democrat himself until he met the Communist thugs up close and personal as President of the Screen Actors Guild.
Actors need a union for pay and working conditions issues. So Reagan worked for the union. But Marxist Communists are really murderers and thieves. Always have been down to today's Obama and Pelosi. That is why they always hated Reagan for exposing them in Hollywood.
Who's lovable, who's not. Jack Benny was lovable. Lenny Bruce and Andy Kauffman not so much......I mean no disrespect to her talent and intelligence when I say that Joan Rivers wasn't especially lovable......She was probably aware of that fact. Maybe that's what drove her. Fame, adulation, and bookings are no substitute for love, but, on the other hand, neither are they chopped liver.
Love the anecdote about the restaurant. Oh, the indignities of being a multi-millionaire celebrity who's used to people kissing up to her.
How dare the busy little people not recognize her. Hard to imagine Jack Benny or Johnny Carson doing what she did.
That and the chateau anecdote--fascinating insights into the lives of the rich and entitled.
What year did Joan say that about men in shorts? I knew a German guy in Zurich (ca. 1992) who had travelled through America and to Vegas; he was shocked, shocked about that same issue. I can still hear him rail: Die spielen in kurzen Hosen! (They gamble in shorts!)
Oh, the Germanity!
If Joan didn't come out as a Republican, it's kind of creepy for Peggy to declare her to be one after she's unable to speak for herself.
But if Joan never said Democrat or Republican, I think it's a better bet that she was Republican. Or that she was neither. Perhaps she was like me, alienated from both parties, for different reasons. If you are liberal on the social issues, you don't want to be in the GOP, but the mere fact that the Dems claim that set of issues as their own isn't enough to make you belong to them. They're bad on all sorts of other issues.
I thought the column was more about Peggy Noonan than Joan Rivers. If you have not yet read it, here is a precis:
I knew Joan Rivers . . . in fact I was with her at a moment of high drama with lots of other important people during Reagan's funeral (I wrote speeches for him in case you didn't know that) . . . and Joan revealed to me that she, like me, was a Republican . . . and we had a rich Republican friend in common who invited both of us to his vacation home, which is a mansion in France . . . and lots of other important people were in France with us like Walter Cronkite . . . and Joan and I were such free spirits that we put on a variety show for all the important people at the fancy house in France . . . and, oh, by the way, while we were in France together at our rich friend's house we had another moment of semi-high drama involving a balloon ride . . . and Joan passed on to me great original insights such as, "a career is like a shark; it moves forward or dies."
I've thought Peggy Noonan was a phony for some time now; this column brilliantly captures the essence of her phoniness.
@66
I agree. Well put.
I came to dislike Peggy Noonan too but I enjoyed this article. I'm not bothered that she is maybe sharing in some reflected glory or whatever.
Peggy Noonan's attitude and hostility to Sarah Palin revealed her to be an elite Washington beltway/NY snob.
Joan Rivers could be so gracious.
Sometime after that Frenchman supposedly made a tribute honoring Joan and Peggy Noonan as representative Americans, Joan wrote in her book I HATE EVERYONE: "I hate the French. Why? Because those morons still think Jerry Lewis is fabulous, that's why." "Parisians always walk around with this expression on their faces like they've just smelled something horrible. Well, guess what? 'Hey, Jean-Claude, the smell is from you. You stink!' The French are not known for their hygiene; in fact, the level of b.o. in Paris is tres horrible mostly because the French always have their arms up in the air -- since they're always surrendering. It is a country of smelly cowards. Do not, I repeat, do not stand downwind on a hot summer day on the Champs-Elysees."
Hilarious, and so original. Yes, in that above quote Joan did use a semicolon. It wasn't for nothing that she spent four years at Barnard.
I just saw a video a few days ago of Joan and Melissa being interviewed. Joan said she was a Republican and Melissa clarified that her mother was what we term a Country Club Republican or a California Republican.
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