Joan Rivers’ New Book: She’s into Hard Core Scorn

I reviewed Joan Rivers’ new humor book, “I Hate Everyone… Starting with Me” for the Associated Press this week. I’ve always been fond of Joan and find her self-deprecating, bitchy humor amusing. But in this book she goes too far with the negativity and 242 pages of insults and mocking was too much. You can read my review here.

The piece was on several sites but I chose the Yahoo version because I want you to scroll down to the comments following the review. Most criticized Joan with cheap shots about her age, comedic abilities, and plastic surgery. Others accused her of causing her husband’s suicide and being a greedy Jew.

Really? That’s the level of discourse we’re at?

Perhaps I’m naive because I don’t spend much time making or reading many comments online besides my blog, but people always shock me with their levels of spite. Of course it’s easy to say nasty things when you’re sitting alone with a keyboard. I wonder how many of those hostile cowards would make similar comments in a crowded room.

The last paragraph of my review suggests that if you look at almost any online story these days, you can usually find hateful, angry comments so perhaps that’s the crowd Joan is addressing with this book. Ironically, I bet none of the haters who commented even read the review (or the book)  before making their judgments. If they had, they might have realized their own folly.