• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Let's Give Joan Rivers Her Due

Lawyers are circling the wagons:

The clinic denies the Daily News story. They say no biopsy was performed and no one at the clinic (they didn't mention Rivers by name) was given a general anesthesia.

Now the headline should read: Whom Will Melissa Sue?
 
She also had irregular heartbeat. People who have that condition are cautioned not to have major surgery or use anesthesia.
 
In 2003 my 88-year old uncle elected to have intestinal surgery when his doctor told him he had a weak spot that could have burst and killed him. He survived the first surgery but the artificial patch didn't work so they went back in....and this time he didn't make it. Happens all the time. He could have played the odds, not had surgery, and lived for another decade or he could have died with a burst aneurism the next day. Who knows? After witnessing what he went through I made a decision that nature will take its course for me. At least I will not waste money on a medical procedure that is not likely to make a difference.
 
Last edited:
Last week I taped an episode of "Pioneers of Television". It just happened to be followed by an episode of "Keeping Up Appearances", which I have a season pass for just in case there's anything I missed. I watched the latter first and realized someone must have messed up because I was seeing Joan and Johnny Carson.

I watched what I thought would be the "Pioneers" episode. Beforehand, I saw something onscreen about a schedule change. This plain-looking old woman with really short hair was putting on makeup. It turned out to be the "American Masters" Joan Rivers episode. I didn't see all of it since I wasn't taping the next show, but what I saw was great. They had to bleep a lot of words in an incredibly nasty standup routine she was doing in a club, and the show was rated TV-MA. It didn't need to be since the offensive words were taken out. But that wasn't the real Joan Rivers. She even said her marriage to Edgar was good, though bashing him was part of her act. It was so sad to see what happened. He was a good man but not a good businessman, apparently. I had forgotten he killed himself. In most of the episode when she was with people she works with, she was a perfectly nice person. They even showed her delivering food to the poor on Thanksgiving before having her friends and family eat with her at a big table later in the day. This was a genuinely nice person we got to see.

Strangely, she and Melissa didn't appear to get along, but when she and Melissa were both on "Celebrity Apprentice" Joan knew it would hurt Melissa to be fired and she cared enough that she would have let herself be fired instead. Melissa was fired and she was genuinely hurt and appeared to need bleeping. And I saw them both without makeup. Yikes!

And I could tell when "Keeping Up Appearances" was nearing its end that this show wasn't over, but not having known in advance, there was nothing I could do. I would like to have seen the rest.
 
This was PBS airing the 2010 documentary "A Piece Of Work". It got rave reviews when it came out and played theatres briefly. I first saw it on Showtime a couple years ago. It's been out on DVD for a few years. I had it saved for future purchase on amazon @$4. When Joan died, the price skyrocketed to $20 (now down to under $10 again).

Available online for free until 10-08-14
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmas...h-full-film-joan-rivers-a-piece-of-work/3494/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568150/
http://www.amazon.com/Joan-Rivers-Piece-Of-Work/dp/B00433KF1E

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/pbs-will-air-joan-rivers-documentary-330981
 
Last edited:
sandiegoinexile said:
This was PBS airing the 2010 documentary "A Piece Of Work". It got rave reviews when it came out and played theatres briefly. I first saw it on Showtime a couple years ago. It's been out on DVD for a few years. I had it saved for future purchase on amazon @$4. When Joan died, the price skyrocketed to $20 (now down to under $10 again).

Available online for free until 10-08-14
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmas...h-full-film-joan-rivers-a-piece-of-work/3494/
Click to expand...
Thank you for this. I found it. It took some effort to watch because the computers at the library were misbehaving, but they found me one that is normally used for job searches and such which allowed me to see it.

She told a Helen Keller joke and a man said his son was deaf. The way she handled it makes me wonder if I should really be so easily offended.

It was a really good program and she was such a nice person when not doing her act.
 
And now I know why she died.

Gene Weingarten wrote a column several months ago about how celebrities die when he writes about them. He randomly picked a celebrity he thought was old enough to be likely to die soon ... I haven't read what he has written recently (but I'm sure he blames himself) because I had limited time at the library where I could access the column although the resource is available at all the libraries I go to. If I went to the Washington Post web site, I would soon be told to pay for more articles.
 
Joan Rivers Cause of Death Revealed

The findings were released Thursday in a statement by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner:

“OCME has completed its investigation. The cause of Ms. Rivers’ death is anoxic encephalopathy due to hypoxic arrest during laryngoscopy and upper gastrointestinal endoscopy with propofol sedation for evaluation of voice changes and gastroesophageal reflux disease. The manner of death is therapeutic complication. The classification of a death as a therapeutic complication means that the death resulted from a predictable complication of medical therapy.”
Click to expand...

http://www.thewrap.com/joan-rivers-cause-of-death-revealed/
 
This opens the way for professional sanctions and possible criminal charges against the doctors who treated her. Not to mention the large lawsuit. Glad I'm not this guy's malpractice insurer.

'Predictable Complication' He'll be paying......BIG TIME!
 
umfan said:
This opens the way for professional sanctions and possible criminal charges against the doctors who treated her. Not to mention the large lawsuit. Glad I'm not this guy's malpractice insurer.

'Predictable Complication' He'll be paying......BIG TIME!
Click to expand...

Oh, don't worry about the insurance company. They will just raise their rates. Docs will pay more for malpractice insurance. Docs will raise rates. We will pay more for health coverage; the government will also pay more. The insurance company will do just fine. So will Melissa's lawyers.
 
Federal Inquiry Finds Numerous Violations During Joan Rivers’s Treatment

A Manhattan clinic treating Joan Rivers in August did not notice that her vital signs were deteriorating for at least 15 minutes before she went into cardiac arrest, leading to her death several days later, a federal investigation has found.

Released on Monday, a report said that Ms. Rivers’s blood pressure and pulse decreased precipitously while she was on the operating table on Aug. 28 between 9:12 and 9:26 a.m., yet cardiopulmonary resuscitation began at 9:28 at the earliest.

“The physicians in charge of the care of the patient failed to identify deteriorating vital signs and provide timely intervention during the procedure,” said the report, issued by investigators for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Click to expand...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/n...ng-vital-signs-federal-inquiry-says.html?_r=0
 
FredLeonard said:
Oh, don't worry about the insurance company. They will just raise their rates. Docs will pay more for malpractice insurance. Docs will raise rates. We will pay more for health coverage; the government will also pay more. The insurance company will do just fine. So will Melissa's lawyers.
Click to expand...
And this is one reason we are in the mess we are in.

Paul Krugman thinks things are just fine but I fear he also sees pink bunnies in his world.
 
I can't delete the duplicate but it fits better here.

Gene Weingarten wrote a column several months ago about how celebrities die when he writes about them. He randomly picked a celebrity he thought was old enough to be likely to die soon ... I haven't read what he has written recently (but I'm sure he blames himself) because I had limited time at the library where I could access the column although the resource is available at all the libraries I go to. If I went to the Washington Post web site, I would soon be told to pay for more articles.
 
Last edited:
This was the first topic I found. "Celebrity Apprentice" will include Joan as a judge when it starts back in January.

I copied and pasted this and many other newspaper articles into an email so I could read them later when I had more time. Unfortunately, the next item below that turned out to be the first entry in a classic News of the Weird about a Weekend at Bernie's scam.
 
And now Melissa has sued. Good for her.

I'm a week and a half late, but I forgot to come here when I heard it was her week on "Celebrity Apprentice".
 
It was nice to see clips of her on the Daytime Emmys. Melissa got applause and she had nice things to say. She didn't even cry, which was kind of a relief.
 
I always found Joan Rivers kind of repulsive. When she guest hosted the Tonight Show, I generally watched something else. But my taste aside, there was no doubt she had talent as a stand-up comic.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.
Back
Top Bottom