What’s not to love?
She is beautiful, talented, outrageous and a comedy genius. All this and she is more likely to make a fart joke than your 9-year-old son.
If you’ve ever wondered how Sarah became the comedian she is, this book will answer that for you. Like many people who practice the art of humor, she came from a family that provided her with not only material, but an excuse as well.
The title of the book is pure Sarah Silverman. She deals with the subject like she seemingly does everything else in her life: full-on, bottom line honesty. A virtual breeding ground of dark humor incubated Sarah’s early life. In addition to the bedwetting we have death of a sibling, suicidal depression, summer camp, adolescent over-medication by a physician, the suicide of someone who was supposed to be counseling her, and it goes on and on.
Honestly, it’s a wonder SS is sane much less successful. People magazine praised her when it wrote: “Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor crossed lines...We remember their genuis. And so we will with Sarah Silverman.” However, Sarah doesn’t cross lines, she obliterates them. She physically moves the lines. In July of 2001, she used an ethnic slur in the context of a joke on the Conan O’Brien Show. A member of the ethnic group was insulted, the dustup was further publicized by being mentioned on The View and ultimately resulted in Sarah and the offended man, who just happened to be a spokesman for a special interest group for Asian Americans, appearing on Politically Incorrect. Yes, the media loves its outrage (unless the offending behavior appears on their network).
Therein lies the non-physical part of Sarah’s beauty. She spends the entire book calling herself “monkey” or “dirty Jew” -- it is a well-established fact that she will say nearly anything at nearly anytime. The fact is that you can see a smirk on her face when she says these outrageous things, and, in my opinion, that is why she belongs on the comedy Mount Rushmore because she is unapologetic about the way she does her job.
Recently, Gilbert Gottfried was fired as the voice of the duck in the Aflac commercials because he made some jokes about Japan during the aftermath of the terrible earthquake/tsunami . Mr. Gottfried apparently didn’t wait an appropriate amount of time before cracking wise, according to his detractors. But as it has been pointed out, comedians help us through the bad times by pointing out the silliness that still exists despite what may seem to be a never-ending sadness.
Sarah Silverman is a master of the inappropriate joke.
If you like Sarah Silverman, get this book. If you want to piss off some stiff, humorless acquaintance, get them this book.
Steve Martin also famously said, “comedy is not pretty.” He hadn’t met Sarah Silverman when he said that.
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The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee is now available from It Books/Harper Collins in trade paperback. More info here.
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