Black Is The New White Part 15

Things keep happening that I want Richard to see, that I want Richard to react to. I am doing a Showtime at the Apollo Showtime at the Apollo episode when they actually stop the whole s.h.i.+t and censor my a.s.s offstage. "Hey, Richard," I say to his memory, "this ain't the old Apollo that we know." The theater is owned by Time Warner now, and they don't like me criticizing a sitting president. It might interfere with their lobbying efforts in Was.h.i.+ngton. episode when they actually stop the whole s.h.i.+t and censor my a.s.s offstage. "Hey, Richard," I say to his memory, "this ain't the old Apollo that we know." The theater is owned by Time Warner now, and they don't like me criticizing a sitting president. It might interfere with their lobbying efforts in Was.h.i.+ngton.

f.u.c.k the Bushes. I hate the whole family. Like that mother of his, she looks like the guy on the Quaker Oats box ...

They pull my a.s.s right off the stage. The whole show stops for a motherf.u.c.king hour over that s.h.i.+t. "What happened?" I keep asking. "You offended an executive from Time Warner," somebody tells me. "What? Who?" I never get a straight answer, and I resolve never to play the Apollo again until I am satisfied.

After the dust settles I have a thought that's going to be with me the rest of my life: I wish Richard were here to see this s.h.i.+t. I wish Richard were here to see this s.h.i.+t. I want to call him. We would laugh about the bulls.h.i.+t the way we always do. I want to call him. We would laugh about the bulls.h.i.+t the way we always do.

I have the same thought when Michael Richards goes berserk onstage at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood. He's p.i.s.sed because of some loud audience members. First he says, "Look at the stupid Mexicans and blacks being loud up there." Then he derails completely.

Richards: Shut up! Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a f.u.c.king fork up your a.s.s! You can talk, you can talk, you can talk, you're brave now, motherf.u.c.ker. Throw his a.s.s out! He's a n.i.g.g.e.r! He's a n.i.g.g.e.r! He's a n.i.g.g.e.r! Shut up! Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a f.u.c.king fork up your a.s.s! You can talk, you can talk, you can talk, you're brave now, motherf.u.c.ker. Throw his a.s.s out! He's a n.i.g.g.e.r! He's a n.i.g.g.e.r! He's a n.i.g.g.e.r!Female audience member: Oh my G.o.d. Oh my G.o.d.Richards: A n.i.g.g.e.r! Look, there's a n.i.g.g.e.r! A n.i.g.g.e.r! Look, there's a n.i.g.g.e.r![Audience gasps audibly.]Richards: What's the matter? Is this too much for you to handle? They're going to arrest me for calling a black man a n.i.g.g.e.r? [ What's the matter? Is this too much for you to handle? They're going to arrest me for calling a black man a n.i.g.g.e.r? [off the audience member leaving] Wait a minute-where's he going?Audience member, leaving: That was uncalled-for, you f.u.c.king cracker-a.s.s motherf.u.c.ker. That was uncalled-for, you f.u.c.king cracker-a.s.s motherf.u.c.ker.Richards: Cracker-a.s.s? You calling me cracker-a.s.s, n.i.g.g.e.r? Cracker-a.s.s? You calling me cracker-a.s.s, n.i.g.g.e.r?Audience member, leaving: We've had it. We've had it. We've had it. We've had it.Richards: That's what happens when you interrupt the white man, don't you know? That's what happens when you interrupt the white man, don't you know?

Yeah, Michael, we know. Listening to the exchange, I'm sucked right back to 1975 on Sat.u.r.day Night Live, Sat.u.r.day Night Live, with Richard and Chevy Chase going at it in my word-a.s.sociation job-interview routine. with Richard and Chevy Chase going at it in my word-a.s.sociation job-interview routine.

Cheap motherf.u.c.ker!

f.u.c.king white boy!

n.i.g.g.e.r!

Cracker-a.s.s!

Thirty-one years later, it's still going down in real life. I've known Michael Richards for a long time. I see him around the clubs in the late 1970s and all through the 1980s. He is friendly and never strikes me as racist. But scratch a white man and you'll hear a bigot scream.

Seeing Michael Richards reveal his inner racist makes me reconsider my own use of the word. Richard gives up the N N word in his act after a trip to Africa in spring 1979. "You know, Mooney, I looked all around in Kenya, and you know what? I didn't see no n.i.g.g.e.rs. I was sitting in the lobby in the hotel in Nairobi, and a voice inside me asks, 'What do you see?' I see all kinds of people. 'Do you see any n.i.g.g.e.rs?' No, I don't see any n.i.g.g.e.rs. And I started crying, Paul. Right there in the lobby." word in his act after a trip to Africa in spring 1979. "You know, Mooney, I looked all around in Kenya, and you know what? I didn't see no n.i.g.g.e.rs. I was sitting in the lobby in the hotel in Nairobi, and a voice inside me asks, 'What do you see?' I see all kinds of people. 'Do you see any n.i.g.g.e.rs?' No, I don't see any n.i.g.g.e.rs. And I started crying, Paul. Right there in the lobby."

Richard has always been an old softie. So he stops using the word onstage. I don't. I figure I've been called "n.i.g.g.e.r" so many times, I can d.a.m.n well use it whenever I want. But it starts to die in my mouth a little bit when I see all the comics and rappers coming up, using it like a crutch.

Some people try to run a game that n.i.g.g.e.r n.i.g.g.e.r and and n.i.g.g.a n.i.g.g.a are two different words. That one is okay, the other one isn't. But I know that if you spell it with an are two different words. That one is okay, the other one isn't. But I know that if you spell it with an -er -er or an or an -a, -a, it's all the same. It's as though flinging the word it's all the same. It's as though flinging the word n.i.g.g.e.r n.i.g.g.e.r around is all they take from Richard and me, as though that's all we are. They don't get it. around is all they take from Richard and me, as though that's all we are. They don't get it.

When Michael Richards runs that s.h.i.+t, I figure it's time. Michael calls me up and asks me what the f.u.c.k he should do. I tell him he has to face up to it. I go on a CNN show about the incident and announce that I am giving up the word on-stage. "Instead of 'What's up, my n.i.g.g.e.r,' I'm going to say, 'What's up, my Michael Richards.'"

Jesse Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton summon me to a summit with Michael at the Hollywood Hilton. Michael is beside himself. He doesn't know if I was going to hit him or hug him.

"Help me, Paul," he pleads. "I got crazy people calling me up, telling me how much they agree with me! I don't want to be Ku Klux Klan!"

At the meeting, I forgive Michael. I'm sincere. I figure he's been away from stand-up too long, acting the fool on Seinfeld Seinfeld. Stand-up is unforgiving. You can't go away from it. You lose your edge. It's like Jesse James putting up his guns. You can't just jump back into it. You'll get killed.

CHAPTER 34.

Flash forward to the end of October 2008, to my appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman. The Late Show with David Letterman. The whole country is swept up in presidential-election fever. Barack Obama is leading John McCain in the polls. The whole country is swept up in presidential-election fever. Barack Obama is leading John McCain in the polls.

I'm totally tripping when Dave invites me to the couch. I'm giving voice to what I'm hearing in the streets. I know Obama is going to win.

"Obama beats your mama!" I laugh, yelling it out. "Obama beats your mama!"

A cry of victory, over and over. Dave can't control me.

The next day I get a call from Superman Superman's Lois Lane, the actress Margot Kidder, who is one of Richard's old girlfriends. I know her from way back, but she hasn't talked to me in years. Suddenly she's on the phone.

"How can you say that, Paul?" she says, launching right in.

"What? Who is this?"

"You're going to stop them from voting for Obama," Kidder says.

After my initial shock, I finally get it straight in my mind. Here's this actress, long-ago friend, she gets brain-lock over the fact that Obama might not win, and she's freaking out. She wants me to tone it down. She wants me to act nice and quiet and not rock the boat.

Honey, I am born rocking the boat. I don't even have to do a thing in order to rock the boat. I don't have to stand up and swivel my hips like Elvis did. Just me, just me being who I am, rocks the d.a.m.n boat.

I ask Margot Kidder how she can tell me not to be who I am. I'm a performer. I'm on David Letterman's show, doing my act. And you're this Lois Lane lady who somehow thinks it's okay to try to shush me up? You're telling me about comedy?

After all this time, I've learned that people's reactions to me often have nothing to do with me. Any of the hundreds of executives who I've run up against in Hollywood: It's their trip, it's not mine.

It's about color. That's what up. It's not complicated. It's not some paradox. It's simple, it's basic, it's racial. Because that's their problem. Their problem is with the black male. It's true all over the world. Because we're the s.h.i.+t, okay? The American black male is the s.h.i.+t.

I am not intending any disrespect to Africans. I know what the game is. But the American black man is a unique kind of black person. All over the world, people copy us. Our music, the way we talk, the way we walk, they are all influenced by us. We are the most imitated people on earth.

So how does that work out to disrespecting us? Because human beings always have a love-hate relations.h.i.+p with those in power. The black American male has so much power because he is the world's coolest icon. People love us for it, and they hate us for it, too. Everybody wants to be a n.i.g.g.e.r, but n.o.body wants to be a n.i.g.g.e.r. It's complicated that way.

Somehow I become the spokesperson for all this. Whoopi calls me up, and she's only half kidding, but she asks for special dispensation so she can use the word n.i.g.g.e.r n.i.g.g.e.r that weekend. that weekend.

"Paul, I got some people coming over, and I know I am going to need to call them some n.i.g.g.e.r-a.s.s motherf.u.c.kers. I just need a pa.s.s for this one weekend, so I can use the N N word, just this once. You give me a pa.s.s, Mooney?" word, just this once. You give me a pa.s.s, Mooney?"

I'm laughing, and I give her the pa.s.s. I remember how much trouble she got into when she and her boyfriend at the time, Ted Danson, do a Friars Club roast in blackface. Ted Danson is a black man for one night, and look how much s.h.i.+t it brings him.

I call her up after the Friar's roast. "Welcome to the club," I say. I defend her on the talk shows. If they hate on Whoopi, they have to hate on everyone else who ever appears in blackface. They have to hate on Al Jolson, Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Red Skelton, and Mickey Rooney, because they all wore blackface at one time or another.

I'm on Geraldo's show about the Friars Club beef, and I ask him to come back to me once at the end of the program to say good night. Then I slip off to makeup. When the camera finds me at the end, I'm in whiteface. Geraldo drops the mic, he's laughing so hard. But the bit is censored out of the show.

It's like the joke about a white woman who bakes a chocolate cake. Her little eight-year-old son grabs some of the chocolate frosting, rubs it all over his face, and says, "Look, mama, I'm black."

Mama slaps the s.h.i.+t out of him. "d.a.m.n, boy, don't do anything like that ever again! In fact, go in to your father and tell him what you just did!"

The boy goes in to his father, and his father gives him an a.s.s-whupping. The father tells him to go see his grandfather for some discipline. The grandfather wails into him, too.

He goes back to his mama, all hangdog, his a.s.s hurting like a motherf.u.c.ker.

His mama asks, "Now, sonny, what have you learned?"

"I learned I've been a black person for only five minutes, and already I hate you white people."

CHAPTER 35.

I write a lot of this book-joint s.h.i.+t in Magic Johnson's Starbucks on 125th Street in Harlem. Magic Johnson owns half the town up here. He used to be a poster child for AIDS. Now people are running around asking, Where can I get some of that AIDS that Magic has? It's commercial-success AIDS! I want my own Starbucks! I want my own movie theater! write a lot of this book-joint s.h.i.+t in Magic Johnson's Starbucks on 125th Street in Harlem. Magic Johnson owns half the town up here. He used to be a poster child for AIDS. Now people are running around asking, Where can I get some of that AIDS that Magic has? It's commercial-success AIDS! I want my own Starbucks! I want my own movie theater!

Across the street from Magic Johnson's Starbucks is the old Hotel Theresa, which used to be the only luxury hotel in Manhattan open to black folks. Hotel Theresa is where Fidel Castro stays when he comes to New York City in the 1960s, to make the point that he doesn't want to be downtown with all the white capitalist folks. Across the street is the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building, where Bill Clinton has his offices ever since he left the White House.

Just like Fidel and Bill, I prefer uptown, too. I live in Harlem, with all the white people. There are more white people in Harlem now than there are in Vermont. Even though they buy apartments and town houses and condos uptown like no mortgage crisis is happening, you never hear them admit that they live in Harlem.

Where do you live?

"I live in Harlem Heights." "Morningside Heights." "Hamilton Heights." All these heights heights. So they can look down on folks.

Where do you live?

"I live in North Manhattan."

North Manhattan? What the h.e.l.l is that? Manhattan? What the h.e.l.l is that?

How about that big old Harlem roach over there, what do you think of that? "Oh, that's not a roach. That's a water bug." For the white people up here, the rats are racc.o.o.ns, the silverfish are dachshunds, and the black people are their friends. There is some serious denial going on. They are floating down that river in Egypt.

White people moving into Harlem are crowding out the rats. It's serious. Rats up here are big. They walk upright. They smoke cigarettes. Look at 'em wrong, they'll get on your jock like werewolves. They're huge, and they can climb buildings. They're ninja rats.

Early on during my visits to the city from the West Coast, I find out all about New York rats. I come to Manhattan one time and Columbia Pictures puts me up in a Midtown hotel. They give me a big suite because we have a film deal in the works. I look out the window, and I see a big old ninja rat staring back at me. We're twenty-five floors up, how did that rat get there?

I'm on the phone to the front desk, shouting, "Call the health department-there's a rat up here!" At the same time, the ninja rat is on his phone, calling the police department. "There's a black man up here in a giant hotel suite, he must be robbing the place!"

So a few years ago when I move to New York and find a s.p.a.ce, it ain't a suite at no Midtown hotel. I go uptown and rent a nice apartment in a Harlem brownstone. Only thing is, every time my landlord sees me on TV, he raises my rent. What's that about, you profiteer a.s.shole? You didn't care what I did before, when I wasn't doing anything, why do you care now?

I know my history. Harlem begins as a real estate boondoggle. White developers build it. But they have too many apartments, and n.o.body to rent them. Then a recession comes. The only people who want the Harlem apartments are black people moving up from the South. I still see some graffiti in Harlem: LANDLORDS AREN'T LORDS OF THE LAND, they're sc.u.m of the earth.

Harlem is where I meet the man who'll become the next president of the United States. Across Lenox, I see Al Sharp-ton come out of Sylvia's Restaurant with Barack Obama.

A week before this, I'm at Reverend Al's birthday party. October 2007. Al Sharpton, who is related to Strom Thurmond through their great-great slaveholding grandfather. Ain't America superb? Ain't it the s.h.i.+t?

Al says the party is for his fifty-second birthday. Please. He's fifty-two? Reverend Al's hairdo hairdo is fifty-two years old. But I'm at his birthday party. He keeps calling this Asian girl "Lil' Kim." I think, Reverend Al's gone insane. Why's he calling this little Asian girl Lil' Kim? That's not Lil' Kim! is fifty-two years old. But I'm at his birthday party. He keeps calling this Asian girl "Lil' Kim." I think, Reverend Al's gone insane. Why's he calling this little Asian girl Lil' Kim? That's not Lil' Kim!

She turns to me and smiles and I run away. Over to the other side of the party. But she follows me. I turn around, and I realize, holy s.h.i.+t, it is is Lil' Kim. Girl has had so much plastic surgery she turned Asian? Reverend Al laughs like a madman at my confusion. Lil' Kim. Girl has had so much plastic surgery she turned Asian? Reverend Al laughs like a madman at my confusion.

"Paul Mooney!" Yelling across Lenox Avenue at me now, from in front of Sylvia's. I walk on down the street like I don't want to go over and say h.e.l.lo. Reverend Al's going to dog me out for not recognizing Lil' Kim-che. I know it.

"Paul Mooney!"

But then I realize it's not Reverend Al calling me after all. It's Barack Obama.

Barack Obama knows me? I'm floored. Or because I'm out on the street, I'm pavemented. Never met him before, never had any dealings with the man.

So I cross the street.

He's just Senator Barack Obama then. Hasn't won any primaries yet or nothing. But he's announced, so he's got a whole platoon of security with him and Reverend Al. He's got Secret Service, FBI, CIA, National Guard, SWAT, he's got Boy Scouts and Jesus Christ with him.

"Paul Mooney!" Obama says. "All the stars are out tonight." He's in a suit and looking like a GQ GQ model. model.

Reverend Al stands there preening, like he's so happy to put us two together, even though it is none of his doing.

"You going to the Apollo?" Al says.

Some event is happening at the landmark theater around the corner. I tell him no, I'm not going to the Apollo. Right then I don't say I'm boycotting the place since Time Warner censored me there. Not the time or the place to get into that s.h.i.+t.

Obama puts out his hand to shake but I shake my head no at him.

"Don't give me that white man's handshake," I say.

I hold out my fist. This is how you do it This is how you do it. He doesn't know what to do at first. How to handle it.

On the campaign, people shake hands so much, they get maimed. The Republican wife lady, the pill popper, what's her name? Cindy McCain. Broke her hand. Clinton and those people, they know not to wear any big rings. The public will crush their hands. Democracy.

Obama tightens his hand into a fist. He jabs the air, we miss. Finally, he gets it right. We b.u.mp fists. From then on, he's unstoppable, a crazy fist-b.u.mping Barack-and-roll candidate, doesn't want any more crushed hands.

Half a year later, in summer 2008, during the election campaign, all h.e.l.l breaks loose because Obama and Mich.e.l.le fist b.u.mp and white people freak out. Suddenly, the two of them are terrorists. Bad enough his middle name, now he's doing that jihadi fist jab.

I kept my head down over that s.h.i.+t. I didn't want people to say, you taught Obama the fist b.u.mp, Mooney, now we got that Arizona Mr. Whiteman in the White House.

If I have to explain, I usually tell people I don't shake hands because of germs, like that bald, strikebreaking, briefcase-carrying, game-show comic Howie Mandel. Totally germaphobic. He used to wear gloves to protect himself from microbes.

Germs ain't it. Or they ain't all of it. Know your history. Handshaking means, I don't have a weapon in my hand I don't have a weapon in my hand. That's how it started, to keep people from getting medieval on each other's a.s.ses.

The h.e.l.l with that. I don't want n.o.body to know nothing about my s.h.i.+t. I don't want them to know whether or not I got a weapon. People I run into sometimes, yeah, they need need to think I got a ministiletto curled up inside my hand, that's right, or a tiny Abraham Lincoln-killing-style derringer, or some pepper-spray s.h.i.+t, you know what I mean? to think I got a ministiletto curled up inside my hand, that's right, or a tiny Abraham Lincoln-killing-style derringer, or some pepper-spray s.h.i.+t, you know what I mean?

Fist b.u.mp, now. Don't give me no white man's handshake. Fist b.u.mp Fist b.u.mp!

CHAPTER 36.

Harlem is haunted. I ain't talking about no Harlem Renaissance s.h.i.+t, Langston Hughes and W. E. B. DuBois and all those black-history-month folks. I always tell kids if they ever want to do a real report for black-history month, they should hand in a paper on Jesus. Write about Jesus Christ. He's black.

But Harlem is haunted because ever since Richard's death, every place in the world is haunted for me. I know Richard starts his career here in New York City, down in the clubs of the Village. He kicks off his comeback after Berkeley at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. So I am walking the streets, minding my own business, and suddenly a thought of Richard blindsides me. It can happen any time at all.

I'm in a Harlem McDonald's, subway coming aboveground right here and shaking its rattletrap a.s.s over my head, and I sit listening to a short crazy dude sound off. All I can think of is Richard, hearing this tight little African leprechaun (an Africaun?) rant and rave in a strange, high-pitched nuts-in-a-vise voice. The dude rants to everybody in the Harlem McDonald's, but he's not speaking to anybody in particular. He's talking to thin air.

"I beat you and I hit you," this little Africaun says. "You think I'm small, but I can do it. Come at me, let me see you bring it. I win, because you know why? I may have small hands, but I got G.o.d in my hand, right here. G.o.d is in my hands. G.o.d is in my hands. You don't know? I used to be a great opera singer." You don't know? I used to be a great opera singer."