Posted on 12/12/2005 2:31:18 PM PST by LouAvul
snip....
It's a comedy album photograph of a nearly naked Richard Pryor, dressed in a loincloth, with bones through his nose and beads around his neck like a stereotypical African bushman from an old "Tarzan movie."
But there is a glare on the comedian's face on 1968's "Richard Pryor" album that seems to say, "I'm here and I'm going to change your thinking about race relations in every way possible."
That's what Pryor, who died Saturday of a heart attack at age 65, did for people all across America in the 1970s, his breakthrough decade and a time when the country was hotly divided not only by the Vietnam War but by the civil rights battles of the 1950s and '60s that preceded it.
He did it by bringing black and white audiences together to laugh as one, at least for the length of a concert or a comedy album, at the madness all around them.
"He was a brilliant and incredibly courageous performer," recalled humorist Paul Krassner, whose magazine "The Realist" once published an essay by the comedian commenting on the disproportionate number of black soldiers that seemed to be fighting the Vietnam War. Pryor headlined it, "Uncle Sam Wants You, Nigger."
It was a word he would use frequently in the 1970s, even using it in the name of his second album as he tried to take the sting out of the epithet by repeating it over and over.
After a visit to Africa in 1980, however, he would renounce it and say he no longer wanted to hear the word, either from his "hip white friends" or his fellow blacks. A subsequent recording was titled "That African-American is Still Crazy," with the offending word crossed out.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacticket.com ...
He was funny, but nothing more than a fouled-mouthed comedian. Like Ali, his death will make him the greatest entertainer ever.
"Vulgar" stopped being funny after I turned 40.
Good for you!
I am not 40 yet so is that OK for me to find him funny?
Poor man. He had a tough life. May he rest in peace.
Sure, if you want. My opinion is based on my measure of "the man"... and my measure of a man is the degree to which he made the World a better place. Richard Pryor made me laugh too... but his legacy is one of vulgarity and "normalizing" distructive and dysfunctional behavior.
Foul mouth but seriously funny; he had to be one of the first people I ever heard say the ni--er word.
Sad thing...He was very funny without the vulgarity...He apparently couldn't figure that out...He lost me as a fan...
"Sad thing...He was very funny without the vulgarity...He apparently couldn't figure that out...He lost me as a fan..."
I used to think he couldn't be funny without vulgarity. That isn't true. However, when he was doing movies (and being funny) without all the blue humor, he was being labeled a sellout.
"A genius. His first concert tape is a classic. Hilariously funny, brutal in it's honesty"
I agree. He could have been a bard. But he couldn't or wouldn't get over being a "nigger." I loved his work dearly.
He was a fine man, and I still watch his movie performance in Harlem Nights (1989)with a younger Edie Murphy, who Pryor had obviously coached in his acting work, (Murphy had Pryors Timing).
A very funny movie. Check it out if you haven't.
His humor reflected the life he lived. I don't think he was vulgar just for the sake of it. That he came from where he did, and reached the heights he did, is a tribute to his brilliance and toughness.
It made my heart ache, you know, to see all these beautiful black men in the joint. ; the warriors should be out there helping the Masses. I felt that way, I was real naive. Six weeks I was up there and I talked to the brothers. I talked to 'em, and... Thank God we got penitentiaries!
I asked one, "Why did you kill everybody in the house?" He says, "They was home.".. I met one dude, Kidnap - murdered four times. And I thought, four times, that was your last, right? I says, "What happened?" "I can't get this s--t right! But I'm getting paroled in two years."
This was (and is) a lie perpetuated by racial racketeers like Pryor and libs who wanted to use hate and anger as a political tool or as a means to make a buck.
John Perazzo wrote in FrontPage magazine about this lie: "...whites comprised 88.4 percent of those who served in Vietnam, 86.3 percent of those who died there, and 86.8 percent of those killed in actual battle (as distinguished from those who died from accidents or illness). Blacks... comprised 10.6 percent of those who served in Vietnam, 12.5 percent of those who died, and 12.1 percent of those killed in actual battle. ...13.5 percent of our country’s military-age males during the war years were black meaning that there is no basis upon which to claim that a racist American government was indiscriminately rounding up large numbers of black men to be used as cannon fodder in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The National Archives and Records Administration, the Vietnam Helicopter Crew Members Association, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) confirm these statistics."
So what is Pryor's legacy? He promoted lies of the left to do no more than gain political power for Dem libs and make blacks a permanent component of the liberal plantation.
I hope he rests in peace, but his legacy, one based at least in part on a substantial political lie, is pretty pathetic.
Pryor was basically a raunchier version of Bill Cosby. But both were master storytellers.
Do they still have the Annual Richard Pryor 5K Freebase Run?
Right on. But if he had transcended it, what a bard he would have been! Such is life. What I say does not lessen my admiration for him. I just say he had not reached his fullest potential.
"So what is Pryor's legacy? He promoted lies of the left to do no more than gain political power for Dem libs and make blacks a permanent component of the liberal plantation."
Right you are, Pryor never reached his full potential because he was stuck with being a n________er. He never left the plantation. If he had, he would have been a truly unsurpassably great artist.
But he was more than good enough for me as an entertainer.
I just liked him a lot.
He was a funny guy.
Why can someone just be liked for who they are nothing more.
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