Lenny's career went through three phases, starting with the "bits" that polarized show business and launched audience walkouts. In 1958, when the Tammy Faye Bakers and Pat Robertsons were in their professional infancy, "Religions, Inc." unfrocked the religious leaders sitting around a table on Madison Avenue talking business like sleazy Broadway agents, hustlers, and used car pimps, capped with redneck evangelist Oral Roberts on the phone with Pope Pius ("P.P.") and later, John XXIII;
"Johnny, they buggin' us ovah heah with this here dumb-ass integration....no, I don' want no more quotations from outen th' Bible! They want us to come out and say things like, let them go to school with them! And they don't want the Bomb....Sure they're commies!....And Philly Joe [Jones, Miles Davis's drummer] says hello...."
Lenny's mosy disturbing bit, never recorded in its entirety, was "How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties" with black guitarist Eric Miller. Lenny starts by proposing toasts to Joe Louis, Bojangles - "all you people can tapdance, right?" - and Paul Robeson "who was all right until he got into that commie horseshit." Getting progressively smashed, Lenny concludes with:
"Say, you're a good boy. Lemme ask you somethin'. I always heard that you guys, well, I heard you really got a big wang-on, like a baby's arm with an apple in its fist. Could I see it? Aw, c'mon - let's whip out that roll of tarpaper and see whatcha got there, Chonga!"
Nat Hentoff wrote: "The lines are close enough to parody to allow the audience to laugh, but many find themselves squirming, because Bruce's point is how very little casual social relationship exists between Negroes and the most enlightened white liberals."
This was going on before I was even born in 1962. Lenny Bruce was a brilliant and gutsy comedian who was'nt afraid to tell it like it is.
He died of a heroin overdose in public disgrace, but I am sure if he saw what little progress has been made in this country with all the "hoes" and gold teeth "playuhs" that dominate daytime television with their monkeyshine antics on Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, and all the rest, he would spin in his grave so fast he would pop out in China.
Hell, here is what Bill Cosby had to say about it all...........
It's not racism, it's truth. It's about time someone said it. Said what? Said what Bill Cosby said in his tirade against African American degenerates who beat women, drop out of school, steal, and do everything else they're not supposed to. Unfortunately 98% of the blacks who listened to Cosby speak will consider him racist, stupid, "out his god damn mind," and Bill's wise words of truth will fall on deaf ears. The extremely interesting part about his speech is that it's not racist at all because what he said can be adhered to any race or sex. The following is a brief synopsis of Bill Cosby bringing the house down while attempting to help people realize they are pieces of shit.
The Cos' said:
"You've got to stop beating up your women because you can't find a job, because you didn't want to get an education and now you're (earning) minimum wage," Cosby said. "You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school, when you had an opportunity."
The truth:
It doesn't matter what color you are, you can still give a woman two black eyes if she asks to watch a Lifetime movie when Monday Night Football is on. Too cool for school? That's fine because now you're not cool enough to get a real job. Enjoy stacking burgers and stealing from the register until retirement.
The Cos' said:
"I can't even talk the way these people talk, 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... and I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk," Cosby said then. "And then I heard the father talk ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth."
