Matron of insult comedy Joan Rivers is once again gagging the girls from beyond the grave. In a newly resurfaced viral clip, the comic took aim at a gay fave — and the gays who defend her.
In her 2013 Just For Laughs Gala set, Rivers took a moment to go after someone who’d simply had it too good for too long: Princess Diana, the people’s princess who had passed away sixteen years prior. The opener isn’t even a joke, she just flat out says “I didn’t like Diana.”
She follows up with, “Watch everyone get quiet.” She quickly corrects herself and says, “Watch the gay men get quiet.”
In the resurfaced clip, she even points out the gays in question:
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“Either [gay men] or strong women,” she adds.
Even Babs caught a stray, with the comic joking, “You can never say anything to gay men either about Barbra Streisand being ugly or Princess Diana.”
Related:
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Despite the combined talents of Greg Berlanti and Katherine Hahn, the much-anticipated show hit a roadblock.
The princess was, of course, beloved by gay men in part for her advocacy during the AIDS crisis. She treated men suffering from HIV/AIDS with dignity and respect when many were afraid to be in the same room as patients at all. She even personally opened the first AIDS ward in Britain in 1987.
Rivers reasons for hating her can’t quite leverage themselves against the reasons to love her, but she held them all the same.
Among her reasons were that the princess “didn’t know when the good times were with her.”
“‘I’m not happy, I’m not happy, I’m not happy.'” Rivers mocked with her tongue out. “She was tall, she was thin, she was gorgeous, she was young, she was rich, she had a husband who didn’t want to sleep with her. She had a crown!”
This was far from Rivers’ first time throwing shots at Diana posthumously. As a friend of now-King Charles and Camila, she was vocally critical of Diana as Charles’ ex-wife. In a 2005 interview with Larry King, Rivers defended the pair’s union by airing out Di’s dirty laundry.
“She was also — everyone forgets, as I said on your show once before, she was sleeping around,” she said. “We all know this. There were many affairs when she was married to him. This was not a girl sitting there. This was a girl going, tsk, tsk, call me later.”
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The now-viral clip from her Gala has now been viewed almost 1 million times. However, the comments have been conveniently turned off.
Understandably so; the general TikTok audience isn’t really set up to receive Joan Rivers, even in her more modern years.
In the same year as her Gala, just a year before her passing, the comic was still as specific a taste as ever. Lest we forget her diatribe in support of Alec Baldwin from that November, in which she told TMZ, “What do I think about Alec [Baldwin]? Everybody just relax. Everybody’s either a [anti-Italian slur], a [anti-Black slur], a [antisemitic slur], a [sinophobic slur], a [homophobic slur], a [anti-Irish slur] — everybody’s something, so why don’t we all just. Calm. Down.”
Comparably, she was downright courteous to Princess Di!
prttymn33
Joan was an asshole. She enjoyed being mean and ugly. Now she’s gone, let her rot.
abfab
Well that’s usually what people do when they pass away. They rot. You, however, have started prematurely……
ScottOnEarth
Joan was a brilliant, hilarious, ground-breaking, legendary comic who was (and is) loved by millions of people around the world. The only people who were offended by her equal-opportunity comedy were small-minded, uptight, insecure people who only understand basic humor. Sound like someone you know?
LumpyPillows
I find pretyman to be wild hypocritical. Is it just me?
Gabby
I was to young to even know she was a comedian, I always thought she did the Fashion police show. I recently discovered her stand up on you tube and I have been obsessed since, Joan was and still is hysterical. We need to let comedians poke fun at everything.
Tad
Joan could be funny when she stayed away from blatant and personal character attacks. She liked going after the sacred cows, but there were far more evil and perverse characters she stayed away from. I felt she got more desperate as she aged and went from campy fun to vulgar overkill. Like a Borscht Belt comic at the end of his career. I can only imagine what she’s say about Meghan Markle….
abfab
On Elizabeth Taylor ”she puts mayonaise on an aspirin”
On Christina Onasis ” she raised her arm the Greek National Forest!”
On Liberace ”he’s carrying Truman Capote’s baby!”
On Queen Elizabeth ”if you own England and Ireland and Scotland and Wales GOD dammit SHAVE YOUR LEGS!”
”Oh look at the room suddenly so quiet.”
abfab
And to all of our Children…..it’s not just Joan but please research Phyllis Diller. Please please PLEASE!
You want a little self deprecation to get you thru the day, the month, even your year!
Can we tawk! Oh GROW UP!
bachy
In today’s climate those two comediennes would be so cancelled they’d be “Return to Sender.”
LumpyPillows
Yeah, I’ve often wondered what he cancel culture vultures would have done to Joan, and more interestingly, how Joan might have shut them down. She would not have apologized of backed down to their tyranny. They were, after all, just jokes.
Jim
Joan was a bitch and a shrew. Not all that funny.
For some reason people think making people uncomfortable is humorous.
LumpyPillows
Funny thing is, millions of people disagree with you. You can be a bitch and a shrew too…apparently, but you aren’t funny. Check your hypocrisy, darling.
abfab
Security!
Openminded
This is what’s wrong with the younger generations. They can’t take a joke. Instead, they get all butt hurt and scream cancel.
Ronbo
Jim proves the adage that “Haters are gonna hate”. Is that the point Queerty editors – to enrage more haters to encourage our community to look hateful and foolish? Maybe Graham Gremore can finally land a permanent gig as contributor on FOX. His false stories accusing successful, gay politicians like Alex Morse of predating and grooming youth will allow those dreams of coming true.
Is my M.O. of pointing out such deranged hate a hateful act in itself? I don’t think so; but, let’s ask the haters.
LegionKeign
Lisa Lampanelli is another comic I miss from the old days. She used to make me piss laughing.
abfab
”my blacks”….NYT (she was a trip) And watch Sebastian Montelscalco’s full length stand up from Radio City……OMG.
”She is often compared to Don Rickles for the way she heckles the audience, lobbing insults that play on ethnic and social stereotypes. In “Dirty Girl” she thanks an Asian-looking audience member for not staying home to practice his violin. She asks all the mothers to identify themselves by clapping, then adds, “Hispanic women, you don’t have to clap, that’s a given.” And after she implores a 48-year-old white man to reveal his age, she says: “You look 73. Kill yourself.”
LumpyPillows
Self cancelling? I’m sure Lisa would give the snowflakes on the left heart attacks. Don Rickles is another one who luckily died before the easily offended took over social media. Well, really any comedian…
abfab
Don Rickles was a TRIP and a half! And also extremely campy.
And Flip Wilson. He made me laugh and also made me hot. And what about the potty mouth on Red Foxx!
abfab
And oh my goodness! Her!
LaWanda Page was an American actress, comedian, and dancer whose career spanned six decades. Crowned “The Queen of Comedy” or “The Black Queen of Comedy”, Page melded blue humor, signifyin’, and observational comedy to joke about sexuality, race relations, African-American culture, and religion. Wikipedia
LumpyPillows
I’d forgotten about Wanda. Shame on me.
abfab
LaWanda can be found on youtube, bless her little heart. House producers in the 90s would sample her into tracks…………OMG. I think Ru used her voice on SUPER MODEL…..about ”the little black girl from the Brewster Projects.”
gothvixen
For LumpyPillows, as I can’t reply directly. Snowflake was a feeble insult when it emerged, but time has shown that the hateful right are the worst for becoming enraged by…nothing. They even invent their own lies so they can attack others – see: ‘Drag queens are sexually excited by appearing before children, who they try to groom’. Has anyone ever heard such utter bilge? Standing against bigotry isn’t the act of someone who melts easily, but failing to recognise your own hypocrisy says so much about your intellect.
cuteguy
One (of many) good things of this old hag being gone is that we are sparred her no talent nepo baby Melissa. It’s ironic that Melissa was whining that ppl were being mean after her mother died yet her mother’s career was solely about being mean to others.
Vince
Being that you’re a conservative I’d expect you to relate to being mean to people for jokes. It’s the only thing conservatives find funny after all.
abfab
The POS thought he was being funny ALL OF THE TIME! Who, after all, do the republicans have as entertainers? The list is enough to make you puke.
LumpyPillows
Melissa isn’t funny. I agree. This is one instance where the nepotism argument works; she might be a good producer, but she really has no talent to be in front of the camera. Still, being mean is a bit hypocritical on your part.
abfab
Pillows, Joan’s routines about Mellissa were some of her best jokes evah!
Joan; ”Make your child feel guilty! I still wake my daughter up in the middle of the night and scream MELLISSA YOU RIPPED ME TO SHREDS, now go back to sleep.”
”Yes, I had natural child birth but it was the Jewish kind. They knock you out with the first pain and afterwards the hairdresser shows up!”
LumpyPillows
Truth.
ddmtl
She did’nt like Princess Di because she was tall, skinny, popular, rich, had a crown and a husband that did not want to sleep with her! And she could go to all class reunion, look at me now bitches. That is HILARIOUS! and all the hater, well, get a life.
abfab
Joan Rivers on Princess Di ”my husband bought the horseback riding story- SO DID PRINCE CHARLES! The nerve of that family to marry her off to a gay guy——he can’t wait for the mother to die so HE can become Queen!
She LOVED The Royal Family. Her husband Edgar was British. On meeting The Queen, she once said, that the only time she ever saw the Queen was on a stamp so I went over and licked the back of her head!
Pier
Ohhh Noooo… someone told a joke.. Im shook, oppressed, offended and all that.. A joke , can you imagine someone telling jokes in this day and age. Bring out the constantly butt hurt brigade
LumpyPillows
Exactly.
IvanPH
We miss Joan. There’s no one who’s going to be like her again especially during these times of Sensitive Sallys waiting to cancel anyone who jokes about and offends them.
Creamsicle
Joan did what every good comic does. They throw the insults around and then bring it back to themselves and what a trash pile they can be in private.
Taking a single bit from any comedy show will look bad. I can practically guarantee that within 5 minutes of where this clip began or ended, Joan was insulting herself for having a new face put in over the weekend, or being able to wear her vulva like a bunny slipper in the morning.
abfab
”my body is falling so god damn fast my gynocologist wears a hard hat”