by Joan Rivers
Ugly adults should not be allowed to breed. Genetics is nothing new. If you’re homely and your partner is homely, on a scale of one to Golda Meir, chances are the baby will be homely, too. When was the last time you saw homely parents with drop-dead gorgeous children? If I want to stare at someone with mismatched features I’ll buy a Picasso.
I hate the women who run “the stroller patrol.” Last week I was walking down Fifty-seventh Street, shopping for knockoffs and making snap judgments about the people walking by, when marching toward me was a tidal wave of women pushing strollers. They were marching eight across, like a German panzer division or Saddam Hussein’s Red Army, barreling down the sidewalk, forcing everyone else to walk in the street. I said to one of them, politely, “Hey, you’re taking up the entire sidewalk, bitch!” She scowled and yelled, “I have children!” I yelled back at her, “Well, next time give your husband a blow job and you won’t! Why should I have to walk into oncoming traffic because you don’t want to give a little head?”
I hate people who exploit missing children. Nothing ruins a lovely evening like a cheesy news anchor rattling on about some poor kid who’s wandered off or gone missing or been eaten by a dingo.
Every time I see one of those stories on HLN (which I think of as the Human Loss Network) about some new child that’s gone missing I get so upset I have to grab the remote and change the channel. (Okay, I don’t actually grab the remote. I have one of my assistants do it. I don’t lift.)
It’s bad enough a child is missing, but do I need to see some talking heads trying to leave their imprints on a terrible tragedy?
I saw one pretty little news anchor named Tiffany or Heather or Poppy open a story by saying, “It’s every parent’s nightmare to have their children go missing.” Really? How the fuck would you know; you’re twelve! What I really wanted to say to the little bitch was, “In hindsight, I’ll bet Lyle and Erik Menendez’s parents wouldn’t have felt that way.”
As you can tell, I’m the kind of person who’s always looking for a silver lining and because of that I wonder if children gone missing is part of a larger plan; without them we never would have heard of the fabulous Nancy Grace. Would Big N be a TV star, a household name and the symbol of abducted toddlers everywhere, or would she be making six dollars an hour as a cashier in a Piggly Wiggly or as a hostess in a roadside Stuckey’s?
I love the end of the Nancy Grace show when Nancy puts up an on-screen profile of a real missing child. It’s such a genuinely good thing to try and help find those missing kids, or at least help their families find some closure. But I hate it when the “missing child” she’s profiling is thirty-five. It’s one thing to profile little Amber, who was three years old when last seen at a campground near a lake; it’s another to be profiling Mrs. Annette Roberts, who was forty-one and last seen driving away from her divorce lawyer’s office in a red Camaro with her boyfriend, Vinnie.
I hate people who have thousands of children. They say a child is the greatest gift a woman can receive. I don’t know who “they” are, but “they” have clearly never been to Bergdorf’s.
There is no reason for any family to have more than one or two children (unless you’re the Osmonds or the Jacksons, and the little shits can support you from the get-go). If you have more than a couple of kids, you’re not parents—you’re hoarders. And hoarding is a disorder, not a gift.
Two kids? Fine. Built-in babysitter; one can keep an eye on the other so Mommy and Daddy can get liquored up in the den. Three? Okay, but only if the little one is subservient and willing to do scut work around the house like a long-suffering Polynesian slave. But four kids? Only if the eldest one is in a position to post bail, in case the parents snap because the other three drove them crazy.
Everyone thinks Angelina Jolie was the first celebrity baby hoarder, but she wasn’t. Before Angelina there was Mia Farrow. Mia had an entire farm full of children. I think she got them at Costco. “I’ll take two white ones, three brown ones, and a couple of those cute little yellow things.”
When they ran out of regular kids she started adopting the wildly disfigured: “Give me the black torso, the Chinese girl with five legs, and how about that giant head sitting on the shelf?”
I hate the Octomom. Her uterus is like a sausage maker, churning out one pink link after another. She has fourteen children—fourteen!!! That’s almost twice the number of people who watched Kate Plus Eight. Her vagina must be like the flume—the log ride at Six Flags. The hatch opens up and groups of screaming, wet children come flying out.
Octomom must have downtown lips like garage doors. Her gynecologist’s office probably has a foreman. He says, “Spread ’em,” and it looks like a dragon during the Chinese New Year’s parade. This woman has had more crowned heads at her crotch than the entire royal family put together.
I had the one kid and it was enough for me. If there is ever another head at my crotch, it’ll be going in, not coming out.
I hate it when women breast-feed their children in public. I was on the crosstown bus and sitting across from me was a woman who was breast-feeding. There was the woman, there was her breast, and there was a face attached to it. The face belonged to a forty-one-year-old dermatologist named Lenny, which is strange, but whatever. I said to her, “Do you really need to do that in public?” And she snapped back, “Breast-feeding is a natural body function.” I said, “So is urinating, but do you want me to take a piss right here on the bus?”
I love gay and lesbian parents. But I think we need a law that says lesbians and gay men have to raise their children together. This way, the kids would not only know how to build bookshelves, but they’d also instinctively know how to decorate them.
And for the record can I say that just once I would like to see a Chinese couple adopt a gay baby?
I hate child labor laws. For my clothing and jewelry lines I only hire underage, ugly, foreign children. I sneak them over from China, Singapore, and that country where instead of speaking they make those knock-knock sounds with their tongues. I put all the kids in giant barrels and ship them in the hull of a boat. And let me tell you something, they’re happy to make the trip. Yes, the barrels are snug. So is the twelve-story walk-up they’ll be sharing in New York, so let them get used to it. And the gentle rocking of that boat gives them a feeling of safety like they’re back in their mother’s womb, so they almost forget they’re hungry.
I don’t know why politicians complain about illegal immigrants. I love them! You can beat them like junkyard dogs and they get up and go right back to the sewing machines! They work hard, they work cheap, and since they don’t speak English, they don’t complain when we “borrow” one of their kids. To me, it’s a win-win!
I can’t watch any more of those Christian Children’s Fund TV commercials. You know, the ones with the kids who are covered with flies begging for food… What’s the point in sending money? What restaurant is going to seat them? They’re crawling with bugs. What’s the correct wine with larvae? Flies are not accessories. And why are those children always named Mogowawa? Whatever happened to nice American names like Apple or Dweezil or Moon Unit?
I hate children who fall down wells, like Baby Jessica. Remember her? In 1987, at eighteen months old, she fell down an eight-inch-wide well in Midland, Texas, and became an overnight sensation. News crews from all over the world gathered for fifty-eight hours as policemen, firemen and rescue workers labored to pull this clumsy oaf out of a ditch. I know she was a toddler, but still, you’ve got to be some kind of klutz to drop through an opening that’s only eight inches wide. She didn’t fall down a well, she fell down Julia Roberts’s mouth.
I hate baby talk. It’s a complete waste of time and counterproductive to a child’s development. Babies are born with no vocabulary. They’re like dogs—or Snooki and JWoww—they respond to volume and tone and intonation. When you get a puppy you teach him the commands he’ll need for the rest of his life, things like “sit” and “stay” and “roll over.”
You don’t start talking to a puppy by saying “ruff, ruff, ruff.” You would be wasting your time, making an ass out of yourself, and confusing the dog. I never spoke baby talk to Melissa. Right off the bat, the day she was born, I immediately began teaching her the commands she’d need for the rest of her life, things like, “Charge it” and “Prenup” and “No way, mister, not unless I get dinner first.”
I hate dumb children. They slow down everyone else. How many times can you say, “No, Billy, that’s not a bicycle, it’s a pie”?
And there are dumb children. I’m not talking about slow children. I’m talking about children who are just plain, flat-out stupid. You know the type—the kid’s in his fifth year of seventh grade. He’s got a beard, he’s got a mustache and he’s got a son. He just can’t get fractions.
I hate fraternal twins, especially those who don’t even marginally look anything alike. You know what I mean—one twin is a tall, willowy blond girl with blue eyes and a killer smile, and the other is a hunched over Filipino boy with bad hair and a lazy eye. To me that’s a scam; they’re not twins, they’re just two lonely people with a desperate need for attention.
I am fascinated by identical twins. Not in a weird yet creative, daring Dr. Mengele kind of way. More in a casual, “Oh, look how they’re dressed alike even though they’re fifty” kind of way. Twins who can’t let go of their oneness have always creeped me out. Just because you shared a zygote doesn’t mean you have to share a wardrobe. My dogs come from the same litter but I don’t dress them in matching collars.
But I love Siamese twins (although I think the politically correct term is conjoined twins). It’s so nice to see siblings bond. I have one sister and I won’t even share my house with her, let alone my spleen.
Sometimes one of the conjoined twins gets married but the other one doesn’t. How does that work, especially during sex? Does the married one say to the other one, “Don’t look, Miltie and I are schtupping”? And what about when the twins are connected near the neck and one of the twins dies but the other doesn’t, so the living one just has this head hanging off of her shoulder? It looks like an overblown epaulet. What does she say to people, “Oh, that’s just Debbie. She’s a good listener”?
I’ve always hated child stars, starting from way back when, when I was a child. The first child star I saw was Shirley Temple. She was six years old, two foot six and the biggest star in Hollywood. She wore ribbons in her hair, and frilly little pinafores and shiny patent-leather tap shoes—just like the boys in Glee do. I remember watching Shirley twirl around, spinning and tapping and singing “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” And I remember vomiting as soon as she finished the song. I was so jealous; she had her own black man to dance with.
When Shirley was nine, she starred in Heidi, where she played a perky child who roamed the Swiss Alps with a weird old man and some sheep. She also starred in Little Miss Marker, where she played a perky child who roamed horse racing tracks with a creepy old bookmaker. And who could forget Shirley in Wee Willie Winkie, where she played a perky child who roams around India with a creepy, militant prisoner? Do we see a pattern, mes amies? This all seems very Jaycee Dugard, to me.
But the main reason I hate Shirley Temple is Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. At the same time she was starring in Rebecca, I was in development of the Jewish version of the exact same story, Miriam of East Flatbush. The bitch stole my idea.
To this day I hate Margaret O’Brien. We’re about the same age, if she’s still alive. As a child she was a star on screen; I was on antibiotics for measles and mumps and the STD I got from the cantor. I remember going to the movies when I was seven and watching her up on the screen in Journey for Margaret and thinking, I can play a war orphan, too, you shanty Irish whore! I’ve followed her career for my entire life and let me tell you, nothing, not even the birth of my daughter or the death of Helen Reddy’s career made me quite as happy as when Margaret O’Brien got fat.
I always loathed Mickey Rooney. Not personally—I don’t know him. I’m sure he’s a lovely man, even if he does sometimes forget to wear his partial bridge when going out in public. But the young Mickey Rooney was very unsettling. For starters, he went from being a child star to an adult star without growing an inch or gaining a pound. He stayed the same exact size his entire life. I hate that. Think of the money he’s saved on sweaters alone.
I’ve always been frustrated by the dwarf-midget continuum. (And FYI, I refuse to say “little person.” I hate euphemisms. I know the difference between midgets and dwarves, but I don’t know the difference between midgets, dwarves and people who are just tiny, which drives me crazy because I don’t know whether to put on my “oh, isn’t she cute” face or my “your parents shouldn’t be allowed to breed” face.
It’s not easy making conversation with tiny people. For starters, I hate bending. I believe in making eye contact, but in order to do that with a tiny person I have to hunch over like Renfield walking through Dracula’s cave. I think developing scoliosis is a big price to pay for conversation with someone who’s little. Plus, I’m usually in heels. It’s a risk. Do I risk breaking a pair of expensive Manolo Blahniks just to talk to Tiny Timmy? I think not.
The other complication in talking to someone who’s tiny is that you know that they know that you know they’re tiny and that you’re pretending not to notice. Can you say awkward? How about exhausting?
Which brings me back to Mickey Rooney, who, in his dotage, is not half the man he used to be. (Feel free to write you own joke here.)
Mickey made huge hit movies like Boys Town and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but he’s most famous for the two hundred fifty thousand Andy Hardy movies he made, playing opposite Judy Garland—classics like Andy Hardy’s Double Life (which today would be Andy Hardy on the DL), Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble, and my favorite, Andy Hardy Develops a Cold Sore.
The fact that Mickey Rooney spent years trying to convince audiences that Judy Garland would actually fall in love with a straight man was not only ridiculous, but, quite frankly (to a fag-hag like me), wildly offensive.
One of Mickey’s other big hit movies was National Velvet, where he starred opposite a horse… and a stallion named Pie. I know what you’re thinking: Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t fat back then. You’re right, she wasn’t, but there were signs of things to come. Watch the movie again, closely this time—you’ll see a beautiful, young Elizabeth Taylor… licking her lips when a wagon full of hay passes by or smiling and furrowing her unibrow when the blacksmith comes through town with new shoes.
Okay, to be honest, I didn’t hate Elizabeth Taylor, I was just jealous of her. She had those striking, unbelievable violet eyes and all I got were purple spider veins. It just wasn’t fair.
It’s not just the old-time Hollywood child stars I abhor; modern-day child stars can suck, too. Macaulay Culkin? Tell me he doesn’t need a near-death experience to whip him into shape? Oh, wait—he’s already had one. Remember the fire? Macaulay’s not much more than thirty and already he’s been married, divorced, had a house fire and made three comebacks. I have one word for this: neeeeedy.
I hate Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan and all those other Hollywood trampettes. I don’t hate them because they’re rich and famous but because they became stars in a time of rehab. Judy Garland got all fucked up on drugs and alcohol and wound up living in Central Park; Lindsay Lohan gets all fucked up on drugs and alcohol and winds up living on Dr. Drew’s couch. It’s just not fair.
The cast of Glee turns my stomach. Not because they’re child stars, but because they’re grown-up adults playing child stars. You know that cute Asian boy who plays a freshman? In real life he’s a thirty-year-old man and he’s upside down on a mortgage in Burbank. The only way Lea Michele is in high school is if she’s part of some bizarre religious cult and she’s come back to school with bombs strapped to her boobs and she’s planning to blow the place to kingdom come. The only true character on Glee is the fat girl because in real life
she is a fat girl. (But there is a bright side to being fat. When people talk about you in later life, they will never say, “Gee, she looks haggard and old.” You’ll always look the same to them so you’ll always hear what you’ve always heard: “Same old pig. Her tuchas is still the size of Arizona.” See, another silver-lining moment.)
The other thing that bothers me about Glee is that everyone in that high school is happy, even the homos. On Glee all the homo kids are smiling and giggly and they spend every day singing in the halls. When I went to high school the homos spent most of their days hiding in their lockers crying. If I came home from school and sang to my mother she would have slapped me in the face and said, “Stop singing! You’re Jewish! Everyone hates us.”
No one in my high school was happy. If we had our own TV show it would have been called Gloom. In my high school yearbook Sylvia Plath was the one voted “Miss Congeniality.” The only ones in my school who weren’t completely miserable were the cheerleaders—and that’s only because they were so busy taking home-pregnancy tests they didn’t have time to get depressed.
Can I just mention that I hated Dennis the Menace and Leave It to Beaver? What’s with the mawkish rhyming? The kid was a bratty little boy so they called him Dennis the Menace? If he was a gay Jew would they have called him Schlomo the Homo? And FYI, I always thought Leave It to Beaver should have been about Katharine Hepburn’s sex life.
The only child stars I like are the ones who are troubled because when they grow up they become troubled adults. And without troubled adults Dr. Phil would be doing pro bono work in New Jersey.
Healthy child stars become healthy adults: Ron Howard, Brooke Shields, Jodie Foster… Booooooring!!!
I love that Danny Bonaduce (from The Partridge Family) was a junkie, or that Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia Brady, was fucking the entire bunch, including Alice the maid. Britney passed out with a baby on the dashboard and a Bud Lite in her crotch? Fan-tastic! Or Winona Ryder getting caught stuffing panty hose down her bra? Bingo!! I’m particularly fond of Mackenzie Phillips; apparently while she was on One Day at a Time she was not only an alcoholic and a dope fiend, but she was also having sex with her father! Talk about a Lifetme movie of the week… I mean, I loved the Mamas and the Papas, but not like that.
