I'll admit, that although the Newsweek review was not the best, I'm still amped for his new HBO special this weekend. I thought that he was keeping a fairly low profile lately because of his role in sex, lies & audio tape. Newsweek believes it may have been due to other internal conflicts.
I'm heated that I'll be at work for it. :(
The Gentleman from New York Now Has the Floor
By Devin Gordon | NEWSWEEK
Published Sep 20, 2008
Chris Rock stalked onto the stage at Harlem's Apollo Theater late on a Friday night earlier this month and opened his fifth HBO comedy special by explaining why it had been so long since the fourth. He wanted to wait, he told the audience, until the moment was just right. Rock has become the country's smartest, most essential comic by salting his punch lines with blunt social evangelism. And in a prior special, 1999's "Bigger and Blacker," he went on a riff about how the black community desperately needed a new generation of leaders, like Dr. Martin Luther King in his day—a not-uncontroversial stance, given that many of the old leaders were still very much alive. Now here was Rock, less than two months from a historic election, in the cathedral of African-American culture, arriving like a prophet to testify about Barack Obama. Everyone leaned forward: this is what we came for. To laugh, sure, but mostly to hear Rock on Barack. (HBO will air the special, "Kill the Messenger," on Sept. 27.) click here for the rest of the article
2 comments:
I think it is hard for any Black comedian to talk about Obama. For sure White people are listening to these jokes, and will use them against Obama.
Like they said in the article, comedians always struggle with if white people are laughing with Black people or at Black people, when they make Black jokes.
I am glad to see that Rock played it save this time around. Only for the sake of the ignorant public and media who will blow anything up regarding Obama.
Yeah, I thought it was an interesting parallel that the article drew between Chris' silence and the circumstances that lead Dave Chappelle to leave his show.
The fear of putting our dirty laundry out for EVERYONE to laugh at is something that most comics it seems don't think of at all.
I hope Chris isn't neutered as a result of a possible Obama presidency. There are tons of ways to still get that biting commentary in.
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