Ed said he never liked her. Whoa. How was she worse than Shecky Greene, Buddy Hackett, Don Rickles, Lenny Bruce? Moreover, she was funnier than those guys. What was the problem? She was a woman – that’s the no-no. Women can’t be edgy and politically incorrect.

I loved her, even when I thought she slipped over the edge. Also, she directed a lot of her critiques against herself. Her early appearances on the Johnny Carson show, that helped propel her into major fame, were full of self-putdowns. Her bit on her mother trying to get her married is hilarious. First, a doctor, than, okay, a lawyer, a CPA, a dentist, anyone who can ring the bell.

Here is an excerpt from her New York Times obit.

“Can we talk?” she demanded in her signature call to gossip and skewer — the brassy Jewish-American princess from Flatbush, Brooklyn, and Larchmont, in Westchester County, leveling with the world.

She would take the stage in a demure black sheath and ladylike pearls, a tiny bouffant blonde with a genteel air of sorority decorum. Then she’d stick her finger down her throat and regurgitate the dirt on the rich and famous, the stream-of-consciousness take on national heroes and sacrosanct cultural idols.

On Nancy Reagan’s hairdo: “Bulletproof. If they ever combed it, they’d find Jimmy Hoffa.”

On Charlton Heston: “He told us, ‘I got Alzheimer’s.’ Surprise! He’s been wearing his wig sideways for 19 years.”

On Donatella Versace: “That skin! She looks like something you’d hang off your door in Africa.”

On Sandra Bullock’s Bottega Veneta gown at the Golden Globes: “It looked like Prince’s old prom dress.” (And Tina Fey’s Zac Posen: “A decorative toilet seat cover.”)

On Queen Elizabeth II: “Gowns by Helen Keller.” “Nice looking. Not at all like her stamp. Wears her watch over the glove, though — tacky.”

On herself, desperate for a man: “My parents had a sign, ‘Last girl before thruway.’ I’d get an obscene phone call. I’d say, ‘Hold on a minute, let me get a cigarette.’ ”

There is an investigation into her death. Her condition worsened after an outpatient procedure on her vocal chords. It really looks like something went wrong that shouldn’t have.

xx, Teal