If you believe Joan Rivers—which I do, because, well why not?—Johnny Carson never spoke to her after she landed her own late night talk show on Fox back in the eighties. Supposedly he felt betrayed, and evidently he held a grudge.And he could take a joke!Usually people who respond to comedians in such a manner are people who miss the larger point of a comedian’s work.Although Joan Rivers was a comedy icon who had plenty of success throughout her career, and made a small fortune by using her cutting wit and aggressive manner to not only attract attention, but to make people laugh as soon as she got their attention, the laughter often morphed into criticism.She was criticized for going too far in some of her jokes. I read an article where one of her friends said that days after 9/11 she asked him if he wanted to meet for lunch at Windows on the Ground (a reference to Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of one of the World Trade Center towers). It’s hard to think how a joke could go farther out than that.Unlike the 9/11 joke, which she told in private and didn’t get criticized for, she did receive criticism for telling jokes about the Holocaust, Nazis, and kidnapping victims, among other things.Some criticism should be expected when joking about such subjects, so it shouldn’t be surprising. However, given her long career, and the free-flowing, almost nonstop stream of humor that she produced, she deserved some slack.But more importantly, she recognized something that many people forget: comedians are supposed to make fun of things. We want them to make fun of things. The better a comedian is at making fun of things, the funnier they are. And of course we want them to funny. (Is there anything worse than an unfunny comedian?)There is no shortage of people to tell us how dreadful, frightening or sad a situation is. All we have to do is turn on the evening news. After a while, it gets exhausting. I like to keep abreast of current events, but even I have to tune out sometimes because there’s just too much killing, sickness and tragedy. Bad news.Joan Rivers did many things very well in show business, but my favorite thing about her is that she realized that if something is funny, it’s funny, no matter who gets upset. When she told a joke her primary goal wasn’t to offend, but to entertain. We know the stories of all the bad things, so if someone can find even the smallest morsel of humor in the most horrible news of the day, then I think we should embrace that.Perhaps the reason she was so good at finding comedy in tragedy is because she faced some of her own. Her husband of twenty-two years committed suicide when she was in her fifties. She took some time off, but during her first show back she told jokes about his suicide on stage.Self-deprecating humor formed the foundation of her early career, and she continued to make fun of herself for decades. Some people try to hide the fact that they had plastic surgery, but she used it as material.I’m no fashion expert, but sometimes I tuned into her Fashion Police show with my wife and daughter just to see what outrageous thing she’d say. More than once I wondered if she’d get in trouble for something she said. And the one-line assessments of some star’s outfit (“It looks like a decorative toilet seat cover” or “It looked like Prince’s old prom dress”) were as on-the-mark as they were funny.Some criticized her for her commentary, but she didn‘t care. She got great ratings, was wickedly entertaining, and correctly pointed out that the people she commented on made an effort to display their outfits. To suggest that she was being mean for evaluating fashion choices made by people who want to be judged by their fashion choices is laughable. If we can say how great some actress looks in one dress, why not say how ridiculous another actress looks in a different dress?If I was as talented as she was I’d put some joke here about her being dead.Unfortunately, I’m not as funny as her. Few ever were.By the way, if you like what you're reading here, you should like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes.You should subscribe to this blog, don't you think? That way you'll never forget to come back. Forgetting is bad. So why don't you just type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. I'm not going to send you a bunch of junk, and you can ditch me any time you want.