Can We Talk? Rivers Trashes Nancy Bio

Joan Rivers was beside herself.

She admitted that she was “feeling very biased” against Kitty Kelley’s new bestseller that relentlessly attacks and ridicules Nancy Reagan.

And she showed it Friday by loading her syndicated talk show (on KTLA Channel 5 here) with adoring ex-associates of former President Reagan and the First Lady, in addition to Maureen Reagan and Michael Reagan. Both accused Kelley of stealing from their own books about the former First Couple.

Well, Rivers was just fit to be tied. No more Ms. Nice Host. “This book is just damn trash, and I’m sick of it!” she sputtered, depositing Kelley’s book in a strategically placed wastebasket that was captured in a pre-set camera close-up. “Why is this book right and Nancy’s book wrong?” she complained to Maureen. Why? WHY?

Rivers noted that Maureen’s book was “authorized” by the former First Couple. But she added about Kelley’s book: “This is not authorized, so it’s not the facts,” the curious message being that no biography can be factual unless approved by its subject.

Rivers was now aghast. “Everybody who ever met this woman (Nancy) liked her, and why hasn’t that come out?” she demanded to know. Her guests had no answer either. Later, Rivers was unable to contain her utter frustration, throwing up her hands. “Again, nobody is giving her credit.”

If everyone wants to know about Mrs. Reagan, “why don’t they buy Nancy’s book?” suggested her former hairdresser, Robin Weir. “Yeah,” Rivers muttered. Because, after all, Nancy’s book is authorized.

At one point, when Rivers shook her head somberly, you could just feel the excruciating pain coursing through her body as she suffered on behalf of the Reagans. “How terrible at this stage in your life not to be adored, to have to sneak around corners.”

Mrs. Reagan stopped sneaking around corners long enough to take a phone call (“What a nice surprise”) and thank everyone for being on the show, which repeatedly made the point that it was cruel and heartless to say things publicly about people that weren’t true. Moreover, you truly admired Rivers for her sincerity in empathizing with the anguish of all of those who had been smeared and victimized by those gutter slugs, the predatory press. And Rivers proved it with her final words at the end of the hour, a promo for today’s program:

“On Monday, an hour of gossip.”

And speaking of talk shows, that scholarly research journal Spy magazine has complied some remarkable statistics concerning “The Arsenio Hall Show.”

Showing astounding ingenuity, Spy has measured the length of each burst of applause on Hall’s syndicated show (on KCOP Channel 13 here). Hall himself ranked especially high, according to the magazine, getting 9.31 seconds of applause for saying that the son of South African President F.W. De Klerk is dating a black woman, 10.8 seconds for saying he’d hate to run nude in the Olympics, 12.74 seconds for saying that Haiti’s new president resembles M.C. Hammer and a whopping 15.89 seconds for impersonating his uncle eating grits.

However, the undisputed champ of the applause meter was not the simply hilarious Hall but Arnold Schwarzenegger, with 19.39 seconds for whistling.

Spy noted that much of the applause it measured was accompanied by barking, which of course is what makes “The Arsenio Hall Show” so great.

And speaking of Arseniohhhhhhhh, he took another devastating hit Sunday from Fox’s “In Living Color,” with Keenen Ivory Wayans again doing honors as the arm-pumping, geometric-coifed talk show host egging on his whooping (and barking) audience.

But it wasn’t the Hall parody that was most striking about “In Living Color” Sunday, but its sketch about a recurring, handicapped Superman character named Handiman that was at once utterly repulsive and utterly hilarious. With Damon Wayans as the limping, slurred-speech, semi-spastic super-hero who falls out of windows instead of leaping, the piece showed anew that the finest of lines sometimes separate cruel, pointless ridicule and brilliant, slashing satire.

You laughed, and felt guilty about laughing.

The sketch also demonstrated just how much those with disabilities have become institutionalized as human punchlines and butts of jokes, and how humor standards subsequently have been shaped by these negative stereotypes.

Coincidentally, the Handiman sketch aired only a few days after officials at Warner Bros. were urged by representatives of the National Stuttering Project to be more enlightened. It’s those old Warners cartoons starring a stuttering Porky Pig that air nightly on cable’s Nickelodeon channel, in effect mocking real-life stutterers and children with speech problems.

Warners invited the National Stuttering Institute in for a meeting after the appearance of stories about its plans to picket the studio on May 11. The studio officials heard a proposal by the institute’s Ira Zimmerman that the enduring chump Porky be replaced by an assertive stuttering Porky who would be an advocate for kids who stutter.

That the studio even agreed to listen is a positive sign. But listening without acting still rates a zero on the applause meter.

That’s all, folks.