Can we talk?

Comedian, actress, talk show talker, celebrated-for-being-a-celebrity Joan Rivers has died, age 81.

If you’ve had any television service—even broadcast-only—in the past 50 years, you’ve heard Rivers. If you’ve had cable, you’ve heard and seen her, probably much more than you’ve seen your siblings.

Rivers was a comedic pioneer, not only because she was a woman, although she certainly blazed the trail for the women who followed her, but because she was absolutely fearless. She’d take on anyone and anything, including the Israelis and Palestinians, her own plastic surgeries and the suicide of her husband.

Everything was a legitimate target for her sharp and brash wit.

In recent years I could only take her in small doses—I didn’t watch her on all those red carpets, I caught the soundbites on YouTube. But she still made me howl, because she was saying what anyone with half an eye was thinking.

(I almost said, “what anyone with a modicum of taste”, but let’s face it: Rivers could take the piss with some of the outfits she herself wore. Didn’t matter—if someone wanted to take her on, let ‘em. But they’d better be prepared for return fire.)

I’m not going to go into detail; I’ll let her do it for herself. She was amazingly good at that.