Joan Rivers

Joan Rivers has died not long after her disgusting comments about the Palestinian men women and children---nearly 500 children---slaughtered in Gaza by her fellow Jews. "They deserve to be dead," she said in her ugly, rasping voice. I saw someone defend her by suggesting that this was some sort of clever joke on her part. "That's what comedians do." They make disgusting racist comments that aren't funny and obviously aren't intended to be?

It reminds me of what Norman Finkelstein wrote after Christopher Hitchens' death. His comment was specific to Hitchens, but I think pretty much the same about Rivers:

I get no satisfaction from Hitchens's passing.

Although he was the last to know it, every death is a tragedy, if only for the bereft child--or, as in the case of Cindy Sheehan, bereft parent--left behind.

But, still, life is full of surprises.

No one should be too smug in his certitudes.

And if you've made a career of pissing on other people's mostly innocuous beliefs, should it surprise that outside the tiny tent called Vanity Fair, your memory stinks of urine?