by When Amy Schumer recorded her first stand-up special for Comedy Central in 2007, she said she had to fight with the cable network’s censors over a joke that implied her friend had had an abortion. Only afterward did she realize Joan Rivers had managed to tell a similar joke about abortion without saying the word on network television — NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson — some three and a half decades earlier.
Rivers, who died suddenly earlier this year, inspired so many comedians. Women, in particular; Schumer, especially.
“Now I’m not going to say how big of balls she had to say that joke on the air, because she has taught us time and time again that having balls has nothing to do with it,” Schumer said.
She said this and much more about Joan’s impact and her importance in comedy at the recent Glamour Women of the Year event.
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