RIP Joan Rivers: Truly, a 'Piece of Work'

How to sum up a life like the one lived by Joan Rivers? Here are some of the early attempts:

• New York Times: "... the raspy loudmouth who pounced on America’s obsessions with flab, face-lifts, body hair and other blemishes of neurotic life, including her own, in five decades of caustic comedy that propelled her from nightclubs to television to international stardom ..."
• AP: "... the raucous, acid-tongued comedian who crashed the male-dominated realm of late-night talk shows and turned Hollywood red carpets into danger zones for badly dressed celebrities ..."

• Reuters: " ... who became a comedic star with an act that was a mélange of insult, insecurity, over-the-top cattiness and a nothing-is-sacred philosophy ..."
• USA Today: "... the pioneering queen of comedy, who overcame tragedy and disappointment to transform herself in late life into a comic scourge of the red carpet ..."
• Washington Post: "While Ms. Rivers was not the first female comic to become a household name—that distinction goes to women such as Phyllis Diller—she was among the first mainstream funny women to go dirty."
• Time: "Rivers didn’t need everybody to like her. Scratch that: Rivers needed not everyone to like her. She wasn’t about being fair or being a pleaser, and if she had an internal censor, it was a rubber stamp that said, “GO FOR IT!” She was a hoot and—as her documentary called her—a piece of work, but she was about being authentic."

(More Joan Rivers stories.)