On a press tour to promote her new reality show on WE tv, Joan Rivers was stopped on the red carpet and asked for some standard celebrity soundbites on what she thought of Sarah Palin’s chances for 2012. Rivers responded as she is wont to do, with humor — and teeth. “I think Sarah Palin is an amazing woman, I think she represents everything a strong woman should be and [beat] she should go someplace like to another planet and show them and get out of our face.” In the follow-up question about whether Palin was to blame for the shooting in Tucson (Joanie issued an unequivocal yes), she dismissed the mother of all Mama Grizzlies as “stupid and a threat.” Less than a minute, and the interview was over. Soon after, the video was uploaded on TMZ. When she woke up this morning, Rivers says she found out that those comments had gotten her and her daughter banned from an appearance of Fox & Friends. We asked Joan to tell what went down and whether she could come up with a Sarah Palin joke that was actually worthy of her getting kicked off the air. From the back of a limo on her way to another interview, she graciously obliged.
How did you hear about Fox’s decision?
We’re here to promote our new reality show and we’re talking to everybody. And somewhere along the line, I must’ve said something about Sarah Palin, she should be on another planet, she’s stupid, and this morning it came down. We were ousted from Fox & Friends, I guess Fox & Former Friends. Our PR person was told specifically, because she asked why, it was because of the Sarah Palin remark, which they now are denying. This girl! We’ll take lie detector tests. It’s absolutely exactly what they said. Welcome to the eighties!
How so?
In the eighties things were just very tight and censored and let’s go back to McCarthyism, let’s go even further back. I couldn’t care anything about Sarah Palin. I even voted for her stupid left-footed daughter over David Hasselhoff. So you understand how neutral I am.
As I like to say, the new title could be Fox & Friends of Sarah Palin. Put it on the Christmas card.
What you said really didn’t seem that offensive.
You know what the saddest thing about this is? It wasn’t even a good joke.
Do you have a better Sarah Palin joke?
Oh, I have a million jokes, but I don’t want to get into a crosshairs. I’m Jewish, I don’t want to get into starhairs. No, no, no, those little fat fingers reach out. You want to know something, I think she’s jealous of our new reality show. Because on her reality show they kill a moose, on our reality show, you see Melissa naked.
If I’m banned from Fox News for saying Sarah Palin is stupid and a threat, wait till they hear my shocking opinion that Aretha Franklin is a bit overweight. I guess BET will ban me.
Are you going to try to refrain from making Palin jokes for the rest of the press tour?
Like I said, the tragedy of all this was that it wasn’t a joke, it was a just a statement. I’m terribly blue now. To match my legs. Can you imagine you don’t even know what you said and they call you over and say that’s it, you’re off the show? And they specifically tell you why. I’m scared now to say maybe last night’s Saturday Night Live wasn’t that funny — there goes NBC. My career is going to be blown out of the water because of this reality show.
And I like Sarah Palin, can I just add? You know I love when that whole blood libel thing happened and she said, “I’m not an anti-Semite, I have a black friend.” So they got the wrong chick and I love her that she stood up and said that. God bless her.
