Althouse: "She loved with her whole heart and she also hated with her whole heart, which I love."

September 5, 2014

"She loved with her whole heart and she also hated with her whole heart, which I love."

23 comments:

Bob Boyd said...: "She loved with her whole heart and she hated with her whole heart"

Just like Aqsa only different.; 9/5/14, 8:44 AM
David said...: The one where Joan's death gets Jimmy and Sarah back together. Check their body language.; 9/5/14, 8:49 AM
jacksonjay said...: That screechin harpy must be broken. Two minutes without a single unfunny abortion joke.; 9/5/14, 8:50 AM
MadisonMan said...: I liked that Joan did not kowtow to the Politically Correct. We need people like that.; 9/5/14, 8:51 AM
Wince said...: Rivers didn't "hate".

She loathed, which is different, more descript and funnier.; 9/5/14, 8:54 AM
CStanley said...: Someone else mentioned this yesterday- these embedded videos don't show up on IPads. Sometimes I really don't care, especially if there's a link or transcript, but this is an example of a post that is completely blank space on my device.; 9/5/14, 9:07 AM
Birches said...: The one where Joan's death gets Jimmy and Sarah back together. Check their body language

Yeah, I thought the same thing. Weird. And I'm not happy about this. I actually like Kimmel, but it's hard to like him when he's dating/engaged to her. Btw didn't he just have a kid with someone else?; 9/5/14, 9:10 AM
MayBee said...: Kimmel is married. So I hope this was just an instance of him trying too hard not to look uncomfortable interviewing Silverman.; 9/5/14, 9:16 AM
traditionalguy said...: Joan was authentic when she over the top trashed someone, but then it was over and she was on to the next one.

Her speed at coming up with a quip was better than Robin Williams was, but not as insane as his. Her quips made sense and asserted that no target was exempt.; 9/5/14, 9:23 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Her speed at coming up with a quip was better than Robin Williams was, but not as insane as his. Her quips made sense and asserted that no target was exempt."

I think her quips were pre-written. Mostly, anyway. I'm looking at old talk-show appearances and they feel scripted. Williams would come out and go wild, just ranting. That may have set him on a path toward burnout.

By the way, Rivers's husband committed suicide.; 9/5/14, 9:38 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: I have a three year old niece who loves and hates with her whole heart, too.; 9/5/14, 10:43 AM
rehajm said...: I think her quips were pre-written. Mostly, anyway. I'm looking at old talk-show appearances and they feel scripted. Williams would come out and go wild, just ranting.

I suspect Williams' rants were far less off the cuff than we were supposed to believe. I saw him give a performance at an engineering school field house, and Williams went on one his rants with several quips about the clash between nerds and sports. "The end zone...what is that? A finite space? Brought the house down. He did the same rant on an NFL pre-game show moths later. Fell completely flat, but it made me believe somewhere there was a crazy wall full of index cards, one card with that joke on it, and a little star next to it.; 9/5/14, 10:44 AM
cubanbob said...: Ann Althouse said...
"Her speed at coming up with a quip was better than Robin Williams was, but not as insane as his. Her quips made sense and asserted that no target was exempt."

I think her quips were pre-written. Mostly, anyway. I'm looking at old talk-show appearances and they feel scripted. Williams would come out and go wild, just ranting. That may have set him on a path toward burnout.

By the way, Rivers's husband committed suicide.

9/5/14, 9:38 AM

All comedians have pre-written quips. The really good ones can ad-lib as well. Joan Rivers was quite capable of that.

By the way mentioning her husband's suicide was a bit catty. Is there an implication as to the cause of the suicide?; 9/5/14, 10:47 AM
traditionalguy said...: The Professor is right about Joan's wit being less creative than Robin Williams'. But she was lightening quick at inserting memorized material with perfect timing.

For the Not Robin Williams types, that is about all we can do.; 9/5/14, 10:57 AM
FullMoon said...: By the way mentioning her husband's suicide was a bit catty. Is there an implication as to the cause of the suicide?
Official story was despondency over finances. Most likely Joan used that hateful side of her wit to help drive him to it. Part of her routine was frequently insulting him.; 9/5/14, 11:17 AM
RazorSharpSundries said...: I don't know a thing about the relationship between Joan and her husband who committed suicide . . . but if a man can't earn, it's gonna kill him one way or the other.; 9/5/14, 12:56 PM
William said...: I saw that documentary. She was acutely, almost ruthlessly self aware, but there did seem to be a Willy Loman/Beckett quality to the way she kept putting it on the road. Out there with only a quip and facelift to face the cruel world......The legends of living legends have a fairly high mortality rate. Kate Hepburn was something of a doormat. Ditto Simone deBeauvoir. Lillian Hellman seems to have been a truly ghastly human being. I suspect that as time goes by we will learn that many who were within Joan Rivers' personal orbit will have less than edifying tales to tell about her.; 9/5/14, 1:46 PM
From Inwood said...: Joan, who knew her from back when, did my late mother a kindness about 20 years ago which was unbeknownst to anyone but us.

Lillian Hellman did an unkindness in one of her autobios to a lawyer I knew, who'd grown up in her townhouse as the child of her house servants & who loved her dearly. Lilian was writing about all the famous people she knew & digressed to a killer shot, a couple of pages long, of the then deceased house servants.

Mean & unnecessary & most unbecoming.; 9/5/14, 3:13 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: I don't know a thing about the relationship between Joan and her husband who committed suicide . . . but if a man can't earn, it's gonna kill him one way or the other.
From the story I half-heard on the radio, he (Edgar Rosenberg) was her manager and producer of her Fox late night talk show. She and Carson had a falling out over her taking the Fox show (she was the frequent guest host of the Tonight Show) and when her show failed she was more or less locked out of many opportunities and they went bankrupt. The radio story made it sound like those financial difficulties caused his depression which caused his suicide--but I'm not sure how accurate that is.; 9/5/14, 6:38 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Hellman was a communist, wasn't she? What could be unbecoming, except not dying in a fire?; 9/5/14, 7:31 PM
Nichevo said...: Cubanbob, the word you're looking for is not catty, it's harpy, or lamia.; 9/5/14, 7:50 PM
glam1931 said...: "Part of her routine was frequently insulting him."
I think you're mistaken. The insults in her references to Edgar in her routines were all directed against herself, not her husband.; 9/5/14, 10:00 PM
cubanbob said...: Cubanbob, the word you're looking for is not catty, it's harpy, or lamia."

Nichevo I prefer to give our hostess the benefit of the doubt.
Fullmoon you presume too much.

Many, many years ago before I met my wife and before she emigrated to the US she went to Vegas with her mother and by chance found herself with my mother in law in an elevator with Joan Rivers. My wife remembers her being making a very funny remark of the top of her head and being very gracious to the both of them. You judge the true character of a person on how they treat those who can neither help them or hurt them. My wife is a fan of Joan Rivers.; 9/6/14, 12:00 AM