One final attack on Jerry Lewis

Am I wrong to hate Jerry Lewis? Should I identify with him? Defend and support him? He was abandoned by his parents who were on the road performing, held back a year in grade school. He dropped out of high school. I wouldn't believe it without evidence, but he claimed that he was kicked out of high school for punching his principal and sending him crashing through a plate glass window because he was an anti-Semite. I don't think it's that easy to crash through a plate glass window---if it were, people would do it all the time---Lewis wasn't that tough as an adult and I'm sure he was far less so at 15, and the guy couldn't have been very anti-Semitic if he passed up a chance to send a Jew who brutally assaulted him to reform school.

Lewis was even rejected by the Army---he stayed out of World War Two because he was 4F. He went for years talking about the "love" between him and Dean Martin, but Martin rejected him. Critics sneered at his moronic screen persona.

And it wasn't just his persona that was moronic. He was pretty much sub-verbal. He never said anything funny. His "comedy" consisted entirely of making faces and talking in a funny voice. He never said anything funny in interviews---he was like Gallagher and Dustin Diamond in this regard.

No wonder he abused his children.

Now, compare him to Woody Allen. Allen isn't educated but wants people to think he is. So he drops names. Throws in a few Kierkegaards and Shopenhauers. He shows no sign that he knows anything about them, but people assumed that he must be smart. Jerry Lewis, borderline verbal as he was, just told you straight out that he was a genius.

There's a video on You Tube of Lewis talking about Joan Rivers. He was glad she was dead simply because she once said that he was promoting his career with his telethons. Lewis said that he responded to Rivers' comment by writing her a note threatening to hire the mafia to go after her if she ever said anything about him or his career or telethons again.

There have been feuds between comedians before, but usually they weaponize their comedy to attack each other. Andy Kindler, for example, said that the difference between Bill Maher and Hitler was that Hitler didn't laugh every time he told a joke. I've never heard of comedians responding to each other with direct physical threats, although Buddy Hackett probably did at some point.

But Jerry Lewis's thing worked. He went for years crudely stating that he was a comic and cinematic genius and a great humanitarian, and apparently people went along with it, even those who had to have known better.