Silverman takes heat for twisted joke

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on November 29th, 2005

The Boston Herald is reporting that Sarah Silverman is getting some flack because of a joke in her performance video, er, movie.

Silverman’s joke…

…pokes fun at the day of terror, calling the day tragic “because it happened to be the exact same day I found out that a soy chai latte was, like, 900 calories.”

It’s not the first time we’ve heard the gag– it’s the marquee joke that the producers of the movie have been using to promote it. We figure they chose it for two reasons: It sums up her sense of humor and it’s controversial. Well, it worked.

“It made me sick to my stomach when I read it,” said Christie Coombs of Abington, a mother of three whose husband, Jeffrey, perished on Flight 11. Coombs is also the spokeswoman for the Massachusetts 9/11 Fund. “She should spend five minutes alone in a room with anyone who has lost a family member or any of the kids who have lost a father or mother.”

Well, maybe she really shouldn’t. Coombs is understandably upset, but obviously fails to grasp that the humor that is central to the bit hinges entirely on a grotesque self-absorption that is at the heart of everything that Sarah Silverman is/does. That’s the uh… joke.

Mary Griffin, 42, of Walpole, sister of Everett Martin Proctor, who was on the 101st floor of Tower One, was equally disgusted. “I think it’s horrible,” she said. “Anyone that can try to make money off such a tragedy . . . it certainly isn’t a joke.”

To say that Silverman is “making money off such a tragedy,” is stretching things. And it clearly is a joke. Which is why it’s got everyone in an uproar. But to say that joking about a tragedy is prohibited would be wrong. (In the hours immediately following the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, we here at SHECKYmagazine.com advised all who had shows that night or in the ensuing days to lay off any gags about the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans. However, more than enough time has passed that we can at the very least reference the day, the tragedy, the horror. In the case of Silverman’s joke, it is, like we say, more about Silverman than about anyone who lost a life or a loved one.)

One Herald reader wrote the following:

“I think Silverman’s point is not simply to be crass and insensitive, but to push us to dig a little deeper, and examine things a bit more closely, even when it is uncomfortable or unfashionable to do so.”

This would be drivel. The only thing being examined a bit more closely would be– you guessed it– Sarah Silverman. Move along… nothing culturally or societally significant to see here. Just narcissism squared, in much the same vein as say, Richard Lewis or maybe a post-modern Phyllis Diller. To put it another way, it’s a joke.

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