Peggy Noonan had an excellent piece last week on the late Joan Rivers – whom Noonan counted as a friend. 

The whole thing is worth a read.  But there was one part I’d never known about:

She was a Republican, always a surprising thing in show business, and in a New Yorker, but she was one because, as she would tell you, she worked hard, made her money with great effort, and didn’t feel her profits should be unduly taxed. She once said in an interview that if you have 19 children she will pay for the first four but no more. Mostly she just couldn’t tolerate cant and didn’t respond well to political manipulation. She believed in a strong defense because she was a grown-up and understood the world to be a tough house. She loved Margaret Thatcher, who said what Joan believed: The facts of life are conservative. She didn’t do a lot of politics in her shows—politics divides an audience—but she thought a lot about it and talked about it. She was socially liberal in the sense she wanted everyone to find as many available paths to happiness as possible.

I always enjoyed Rivers’ comedy – and like the little life lesson about politics dividing one’s audience. 

Anyway – the whole thing is worth reading.