Legendary comedian Joan Rivers passed away back in 2014 at the age of 81 following a botched medical procedure. Now, her beloved only child and frequent sidekick Melissa Rivers is opening up about Joan and revealing why she thinks her mother would have successfully dodged cancel culture.
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Joan Rivers Would Not Have Been Cancelled
While cancel culture has claimed many outspoken people since Joan’s passing, Melissa believed her mother would not have been cancelled.
“I like to think that she would’ve been sort of grandfathered in and given a path like Dave Chappelle,” she said, according to Page Six.
“Would she have thought that the pendulum had swung too far in the whole PC-slash-cancel culture? One hundred percent Her whole thing was, ‘Life is hard enough.’ Everyone needs to take a deep breath, realize that this world that we live in is insane, and let’s have a good life,” she added.
“She always used to say,’ Making someone laugh is like giving them a mini vacation,’ and I think she would’ve been very distraught about there being this policing of allowing people to have humor and laugh — the world is f—ed up enough,” Melissa continued.
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Melissa Rivers Opens Up About Grieving
Melissa also opened up to Fox News about her grieving process for her mother, saying that her then-teenaged son Cooper reacted to Joan’s death by saying “nothing will ever be good again.”
“And I said to him, ‘Of course things will be good again. They’ll just be different, and that doesn’t make them not good,'” Melissa said. “I think we all lose track of that in the midst of grief.”
Joan’s death wasn’t the first time Melissa had to deal with this kind of loss, as her father Edgar Rosenberg committed suicide in 1987.
“Oh, I’ve had too much grief in my life between my father’s suicide and my mother’s passing and everything in between,” Melissa explained. “I think with grief, you have to acknowledge it and not try to hide it. I always say grief is a universal emotion.”
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Quote Melissa Lives By
Eight years after her mother’s death, Melissa said that she’s living by a Winston Churchill quote that goes, “When you find yourself in hell, keep walking.”
“That’s what you have to do when the s— hits the fan. Keep going,” she added. “You’re going to get to the other side. The idea that I’m always going to get to the other side and that even though in the moment it may not look like everything’s going to be fine, that you’re going to be OK is definitely something I live by, and that’s something I’ve absolutely imparted to my son.”
On top of that, Melissa has always maintained the sense of humor that her hilarious mother gave her.
“Well, it’s always been a house of laughter and humor,” she said of her household. “My mother always told me she thought I was a much better parent than she ever was, which is very funny yet perhaps accurate. I think I did what everybody does [when it comes to parenting], which is, you take your childhood, throw out the worst, keep the best and try to parent your child that way.”
Joan Rivers was truly one of a kind, and there will never be another person quite like her. It would certainly be interesting to hear her thoughts on cancel culture, and the rest of the craziness going on in the world, if she were still around today!