Yesterday Joan Rivers — who is apparently notoriously pro-Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — was asked by TMZ’s cameramen what she thought about the fact that nearly 2,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed in the conflict, and her reaction was… not good. She immediately brings up Hiroshima, because — I don’t know — more people were killed there even though it was a really long time ago and has nothing to do with this conflict? And then she says that the Palestinians are all stupid and deserve to die. OKAY!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIibX4Drzxs
As you can imagine, this hasn’t gone over swimmingly, so Joan Rivers did something that Joan Rivers never does: took to Facebook to apologize for her statements. Well, sort of. It was kind of more of a “I’m sorry you were offended” kind of thing, blaming the real culprit here, the media:
“I am both saddened and disappointed that my statement about the tragedy of civilian casualties was totally taken out of context. What I said and stand behind is, war is hell and unfortunately civilians are victims of political conflicts. We, The United States, certainly know this as 69 years later we still feel the guilt of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The media, as usual, has decided to only quote the most out of context and inflammatory non sequitur rather than giving an accurate account of what my intentions were behind the statement. Along with every other sane person in this world, I am praying for peace. It is stupid and wrong and I am tired of bearing the brunt of attacks by people who want to sell newspapers or gain ratings by creating a scandal about me that is non-existent.”
Uhhhh. I don’t know what else she could have said that would have balanced out, “Palestinians are stupid and deserve to die,” but I guess we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. In somewhat-related news, Joan Rivers is also under fire for a “racist” remark she made regarding Justin Bieber on Fashion Police about this outfit:
Rivers stated:
“You are not a big black thug, you are just like your shoes — ordinary and completely white.”
In this case, I’m pretty sure that’s actually just funny and accurate. Point for Joan, as long as you stop the YouTube video before she starts rapping about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-7c4G7BlG0#t=31
