Fired!, Treason, and Molly

When bad things happen to funny people, we all come out ahead. Racism honed Chris Rock's wit; sexism produced Roseanne's low snarl; and, now, the humiliation of sudden job loss has led to Annabelle Gurwitch's hilarious documentary Fired!. A few years ago, comic and NPR commentator Gurwitch was summarily dismissed from a writing job by Woody Allen, who used the occasion to tell her she looked "retarded." As it turns out, getting fired was the best thing that could have happened to her, because it prompted her to make this movie - in which, by the way, she doesn't look "retarded" at all, but gorgeous, super-smart, and charmingly daffy.

Turns out comedians get fired all the time, and not just from their night jobs. Gurwitch lines up a host of fired funny men and women - Andy Borowitz, Tim Allen and Sarah Silverman among them - to talk about losing stand-up jobs, waitstaff jobs, retail jobs, and whatever else was paying the rent. Throw in a trip to Michigan to meet laid off and bought out auto workers, and you have the whole panorama of job insecurity in America. It's all here - the drinking, the depression, the deep feelings of worthlessness. But Gurwitch transforms misery into a wonderfully hot and sour chicken soup for the laid off soul.

Gurwitch, by the way, is a member of the advisory board of United Professionals, the group I helped found for unemployed, underemployed and anxiously employed white collar workers (unitedprofessionals.org.) If you want to see Fired! in a theater, check www.firedthemovie.com. If you'd like to host a house party to view it on DVD, please contact upsupport@unitedprofessionals.org.

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Last night, just as I was about to give a talk about my new book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, I got a cell phone call from my nephew in Minneapolis. "Aunt Barb," he reported breathlessly, "Newsweek is calling you a terrorist." I told him to hold that thought, but as I approached the podium I couldn't help mentally scanning my last six months of to-do lists, where the only remotely terrorizing entry I could find was "trick or treat with granddaughters."

Fortunately, someone in the audience cleared up the mystery. Newsweek hadn't called me a terrorist, it had reviewed rightwing author Dinesh D'Souza's new book The Enemy at Home, in which I am listed as an accomplice of al Qaeda along with dozens of others including Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Cameron Diaz, Sharon Stone, George Soros, Michael Moore, Rosie O'Donnell, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, and ... well, you get the drift. According to D'Souza, we've all contributed to making America into what bin Laden - and apparently D'Souza - see as the "worst civilization in the history of mankind," riven with fornication, homosexuality, drinking, and gambling. In other words, America deserved that hit on 9/11, and it's all because of us "enemies at home."

So let me confess: We do meet regularly, usually at Cameron's place, because it has plenty of room now that Justin's moved out. This is a fractious bunch, as you can imagine, with Rosie and Michael in the same room, but Nancy uses her "mother of five' voice to keep us on track, knitting sweaters for the brave lads in the Taliban.

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I know she'd find a laugh in this, but I sure can't. Columnist and author Molly Ivins, who's up there in the funny bracket with Annabelle Gurwitch and her pals, just died at the untimely age of 62. I last saw her at the Democratic Convention in 2004, where we managed to squeeze dinner in between our journalistic responsibilities, cackling inordinately about politics, breast cancer, and the anti-smoking puritans. Molly was a force-of-nature type of gal, and I can't believe breast cancer finally got the better of her. Help me out, Molly, wherever you are: I know there must be a punch line here but damned if I can find it.