Some Good ol' Fashioned Racial Comedy

Dave Chapelle, Tracy Morgan, Bernie Mac. Besides being comedians, they all have one obvious thing in common...they all suck.

I'm sure that if they were ever creative or original, maybe they'd be funny. I doubt it, though. These so called "comedians" rely far too heavily on racial comments (I say comments because "jokes" would have to be funny). They also seem to think that they're "cutting edge" and "wild"- the bad boys of TV. Has anyone out there ever heard of Richard Prior? If not, punch yourself in the face and then go watch anything of his you can find. Anything. A clip of him covered in nacho-cheese with sausages in his ears, singing and dancing, would have greater entertainment value than these failures. And, something tells me that this amazing footage is out there (and from this point on I vow to find it). He was truly cutting edge, hard-core, whatever you want to call it. He lit himself on fire- FIRE- and then went on to make fun of himself. What has Tracy Morgan ever done? I think he may have fallen down once on Saturday Night Live, but that's about it. I fall all the time. Give me a special. Where's my special?!!

I'm sick of these guys complaining about how hard life is for them because of racial discrimination. What discrimination? The false idea that they might be funny? Does anyone realize how rich they are? Anyone?! Morgan talks about his life in the projects a lot (pretty much his entire, excruciating act), and while I know and understand he must have faced some trials and tribulations, I am quite sure that after a few seasons on Saturday Night Live (in which, I admit, he was funnY) and a comedy tour (in which, I admit, he sucked), he doesn't anymore. Nevertheless, he still has an ample supply of jokes about his current life in the projects. Shut up. Richard Prior was literally beaten by the cops, Rodney King-style, and again more delicious jokery ensued. No more of this whining. At some point in everyone's life, everything sucks. That does not make you a comedian. It makes you average. Stop complaining- I will not hesitate to slap you.

Now we come to Dave Chapelle. I'll give it to him; he doesn't depend on pity jokes like Morgan. Dave goes right past pity and on to the offensive jokes. Or at least he tries to. I don't know if he understands the difference between humor and shock. Maybe he'd be more comfortable on a show like Jackass. I, for one, would absolutely watch him wrestle alligators in Speedos (the Speedos are for the alligators, not for Dave), or go base-jumping. Either one speaks to me. On his own show he has one reoccurring character, a crack-head, who routinely puts the audience through three to four minutes of one-joke torture. He never bothers to do anything funny with this character, deciding instead that being a crack-head is funny enough for one skit.

If only Dave had stayed in his "funny" stage. Half Baked, which I'm sure all six of you would agree (my reader base is steadily rising) was magnificent. He also had some excellent moments in Robin Hood: Men in Tights. But, sadly, the funny faded and the ego lived on- and grew, and trampled everything in its path, like some kind of giant, unstoppable...ego-beast.