Personally, I cannot abide the woman. I saw her on the Jack Dee show several years ago, and she was making jokes about wearing fur coats, PETA (animal protection group) and child slave labour. She is rotten to her core.
I think she is absolutely wonderful for precisely the same reasons.
I can assure you that she isn't a female Bernard Manning.
Bernard Manning always maintained he was being deliberately offensive as an attack against rising political correctness. Joan Rivers has no such mitigation, she is just odious and repulsive in the extreme.
You have this the wrong way around.
Bernhard Manning was the repulsive bigot (with impeccable timing and delivery I must admit).
Joan Rivers is beuatifully ironic. She's Jewish, she lost close friends in 9/11, her husband was a depressive who commited suicide, she's spent a fortune on Plastic surgery and she makes jokes about it all. She's totally self-aware, it's therapy (for her and others I suspect). My god, she's nearly 76 and sharp as a tack. I don't see what's repulsive about her subject matter, most of her subject matter is Joan Rivers' life.
Sometimes you need to know the background of the performer to understand the joke.
For example, Chris Rock is a true stand-up genius (probably the funniest I have seen since I first saw Bill Hicks and Dennis Leary) but a white Jewish comedian would be locked-up for using exactly the same material. You think a comedy set entitled "I hate Niggers" would go down quite as well if Jim Davidson delivered it? (He probably has actually)
Jim Davidson is an example of when it all goes terribly, terribly wrong (He does a lodda lodda work for charridy though so his racist, masoginism is acceptable).
Comedy is so personal (I mean some people watched 'Allo 'Allo for christ's sake) so it's impossible to talk people around but Joan Rivers really does understand the irony when she makes jokes about people having cosmetic surgery. When Jim Davidson does his ever so hilarious Jamaican "Chalky White" character I don't think there's any irony happening.
Likewise Bernhard Manning said he would never give a Black Person a lift in his car. I don't think this was because of any just crusade against political correctness, he just didn't like any Black people and was prepared to tell everyone.
Here is is in his fight against rising political correctness (and winning it seems)
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/TbldMCfjwq4&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/TbldMCfjwq4&rel=1</a>]]>If you can find me anything by Joan Rivers that is as odious and repulsive as this I'll be amazed.
