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Going further than you might have thought permissible, she treats audience members with venomous contempt. Within the first five minutes of her routine Lampanelli had mocked: gays (“faggots”), white gays, white people, privileged white people, black people, black people who act like white people, black gays, Hispanics, Mexicans, Koreans, Asians, “Chincs,” people with glasses, short people, and busty women. And by the time the dust settled at the end of her one-hour show, she’d added: lesbians (“dykes”), Serbians, Italians, Poles, Jews, Arabs (“fuckin sand niggers”), Indians, Indonesians, victims of cancer, lupus, AIDS, and the swine flu, deaf people, mothers of retarded children who’d complained about her jokes about retarded people (“fuck those cunts”), cock-blockers, “fat chicks,” women with floppy tits, men with small dicks, her boyfriend and his “huge balls” (like a “hobo’s bag on the stick over his shoulder”), fur protesters, business men, people who work for Jet Blue, the “nappy-haired women of Rutgers women’s basketball,” Oprah and her girls’ school in South Africa, Jenny Craig, Larry the Cable Guy, Jeffrey Ross, Flava Flav (“beef jerky in a track suit”), and even the victim of a bizarre assault (“Did you hear about that chimp that attacked that lady? Rihanna was too pretty for that.”)
I don’t have the stamina to enjoy Lampanelli’s entire act, but she’s hilarious. And that’s noteworthy, for the question of whether women are funny is still being discussed. Christopher Hitchens said women aren’t in an essay for Vanity Fair in 2007. Alessandra Stanley said they are in a well-researched response, also in Vanity Fair, in 2008. Two major showcases during Just for Laughs each featured a female stand-up who happened to be the least funny: Kathleen Madigan in Let Freedom Hum, hosted by Martin Short, and Marina Franklin in Comedy You Can Believe In, hosted by David Alan Grier.
