Phyllis Diller Was Underrated

Jason Zinoman: “[She] was long seen as slightly old-fashioned, her self-deprecating one-liners out of step during the brash comedy revolution and boom of the 1970s and ’80s. Stand-up comedy, however, is about form as much as content. … She was not playing a retiring, apologetic wallflower. She dished out insults to her fictional husband, Fang, the same way that borscht belt comics mocked their wives.”