The stellar lineup of fifth-rate talent on the roast shouldn’t have much effect on a first-rate actress like Bea Arthur.
I saw Bea Arthur at the Pam Anderson roast. Could someone please explain to me the connection? She looked like a guest of honor.
She was just one of the roasters.
I think Bea was probably the only person who survived the Star Wars Holiday Special relatively intact. Golden Girls gave her all her good karma points back.
The sense you get of Bea Arthur is that she’s the kind of person who can take a rip and then tear you one back even bigger. I think that’s why she gets targeted-- targets are either really great sports (cf Bea), so out there that ridicule can’t even do their lives justice (cf Michael Jackson), or so prickly and self-important that they are way too much fun NOT to target (cf Bill O’Reilly). Being in category #1, along with an amazing voice and sense of timing is why I worship on her alter. And would sleep with her. Even now.
It’s an ongoing joke. At the Pamela Anderson roast, someone took it a step farther and said “I wouldn’t use Bea Arthur’s dick to f*ck Andy Dick’s vagina” (or something to that effect).
At this point everybody has come to expect a Bea Arthur joke at these roasts, and the fact that she keeps showing up implies that she knows it’s all in good fun.
I imagine the people at those events know how it works. (Except Courney Love.) You rip on people because it’s a roast, it doesn’t mean they hate you. They’re doing what they do; it’s what the event is about.
Jeff Ross made a joke about “If only Abe Vigoda were alive to see this” at one roast a few years back. Vigoda looked a little surprised!
I love Jeffery Ross. Wonder if he is any good at anything other than Roasts…
Anyways, making fun of Bea Arthur is a time honored tradition in those circles. It’s not so much that she’s ugly. She’s no beauty queen, but I don’t think the tradition started due to her being ugly. It started because she has a voice deeper than the love child of Kathleen Turner and Barry White.
Being that she was pretty famous and well respected, it only comes natural that her friends in the industry would have some fun with her. If you’re going to tease someone as talented as her you gotta find something. And that something is the brutally unfeminine voice.
Once she gets older, and the voice comes with it, she became the quintesential “person I’d not want to fuck”.
The point being, she’s not famously unattractive. Some people are, she ain’t. She is however, famously made fun of.
Bringing this one back up, as others have posted, I read over the weekend that Bea was at the roast.
That makes me feel better. No one is off limits there.
Jokes about Abe Vigoda being dead are a roast staple, too. And Jeff Ross always gets out some good lines about how old everyone is. “This isn’t a roast, it’s a rot! I’ve seen younger faces on cash!”
As for Bea Arthur, well, anyone who can wrestle a velociraptor to a standstill gets my respect.