That's just the first thing I ran into as I looked for old video of Dick Gregory — old in the sense of not things put together on the occasion of his death. That's Dick Gregory talking to Alex Jones.
Here's the obituary in the
Dick Gregory, the pioneering black satirist who transformed cool humor into a barbed force for civil rights in the 1960s, then veered from his craft for a life devoted to protest and fasting in the name of assorted social causes, health regimens and conspiracy theories, died Saturday in Washington. He was 84....Correction appended: "An earlier version of this article misstated the year of the Sept. 11 attacks. They were in 2001, not 2011." Of all the dates to botch.
In 1962, Mr. Gregory joined a demonstration for black voting rights in Mississippi. That was a beginning. He threw himself into social activism body and soul, viewing it as a higher calling.
Arrests came by the dozens. In a Birmingham, Ala., jail in 1963, he wrote, he endured “the first really good beating I ever had in my life.”
He added: “It was just body pain, though. The Negro has a callus growing on his soul, and it’s getting harder and harder to hurt him there.”...
There seemed few causes he would not embrace. He took to fasting for weeks on end, his once-robust body shrinking at times to 95 pounds. Across the decades he went on dozens of hunger strikes, over issues including the Vietnam War, the failed Equal Rights Amendment, police brutality, South African apartheid, nuclear power, prison reform, drug abuse and American Indian rights.
And he reveled in conspiracy theories, elaborating on them in language that could be enigmatic and circuitous. Hidden hands, Mr. Gregory insisted, were behind everything from a crack cocaine epidemic to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; from the murders of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon to the plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr. Whom to blame? “Whoever the people are who control the system,” he told The Washington Post in 2000.
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Dick Gregory on the 1968 Democrat convention in Chicago: “I was at home watching it on TV, and I fell on the floor and laughed,” he told GQ magazine in 2008. “My wife said, ‘What's funny?' And I said, ‘The whole world is gonna change. White folks are gonna see white folks beating white folks.'”
That was funny and prescient. The world did change from that moment forward and we are no better for it.
Dick Gregory was very perceptive of the people who wanted to keep Blacks on the plantation.
"Nigger" should be on the reading list for all American school children.
Sure, Dick Gregory was a leftist - but he was interesting and charismatic and pretty funny. He had some zany ideas about the world, but I'd take one of him over a 100 Leftist-statue-toppling-zombie morons any day of the week.
"I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark." - Dick Gregory
He's on Imus a lot and Imus always says how insightful and funny he is and he absolutely sucks, he makes no sense.
But then Imus is always praising guest Dick Cavett too and Cavett always sucks, but I know Cavett used to be funny. It's just that it was years and years ago and he's not anymore.
"I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark." - Dick Gregory
That's why Santa lands on your roof.
rhhardin said...
He's on Imus a lot and Imus always says how insightful and funny he is and he absolutely sucks, he makes no sense.
But then Imus is always praising guest Dick Cavett too and Cavett always sucks, but I know Cavett used to be funny. It's just that it was years and years ago and he's not anymore.
My exact impression from hearing them on Imus many times when I lived in NJ.
Gregory always sounded like a half-crazy lunatic, and Cavett like a pompous leftist, the thing Trump voters voted against.
"White folks are gonna see white folks beating white folks." That had never happened before! That was so amazing! Shows the special insight of African-Americans!
Though I am a conservative, I have no illusions about the quality of public discourse in the olden days, but the fact that this nut got any credence at all is some sign of decline. Of course, he had his uses for the left. Bullshitting did not start with Trump.
I heard Gregory speak in 1974. I really didn't know much about him other than he was an important figure in race relations. He arrived very late, cracked a few of jokes I didn't get, and bored the hell out of me. I think that's when I began to wake up to how depressing the social protest crowd was.
"but I know Cavett used to be funny. It's just that it was years and years ago and he's not anymore."
This is incorrect. Cavett was never funny, not even one time.
He was "witty."
The NYT should be brought to heal for getting the year of the September 11 attacks wrong.
Of all the dates to botch.
The only time the date is important to the NYT is when they want to make it seem domestic terrorism is a worse problem than Islamism.
Dick Gregory appeared at the 1963 University of Wisconsin Homecoming show, along with the Chad Mitchell Trio and Maynard Ferguson. I was there.
I agree with rhhardin's observations. Dick Gregory wasn't all that funny, and his ramblings were more likely to be flaky than illuminating. But give the man credit. He was brave and outspoken when there was a physical price to be paid for such doings.......Ponder Churchill. That man was wrong about an enormous number of things, but he got one thing right at a time when it was absolutely essential to get it right. I think the same charitable judgment should be extended to Gregory. Gregory was brave and right on some issues, and that's how he deserves to be remembered.
I just listened to the interview. Wow. Gregory was beyond looney and into hardcore crazy. Well, I guess all those fasts and beatings take a toll, especially when you're in your eighties. But, again, give him credit for those moments when he was splendid.
You got the first mainstream African-American activist who is articulate and bright and clean-cut and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man!
there is a sort of black rhetoric of conspiracy one hears (or used to hear) on black talk radio (if it still exists). It is indirect hinting (I guess we might now call it dog whistling if it occurred on the right wing) to those "in the know" about such conspiracies which allows the conspiracies to be referred to without actually saying the words. "I'm not sayin' ... I'm just sayin'." and "you know what I'm talking about." "I'm not sayin' the KKK runs the DMV, but I sat in the room waiting for my number to be called for two hours, and every white person was called before my turn. I'm just sayin' ...." [Pause for laughter and applause] "You know what I'm talking about."
""White folks are gonna see white folks beating white folks." That had never happened before!"
Cough .. Civil War ... cough
I remember Gregory pushing his book "Nigger" (on Ed Sullivan I believe ). I was just a kid but I still recall my Mom's anger with his repeatedly speaking the title.
She had worked so hard to get her five boys to never speak that word.
PS I never found him funny.
There are, God bless them, black people for whom race is not their life's focus. Of course the media seldom features them.
I liked his cookies until I realized he wasn't Famous Amos.
He could have been talking about the battling to come within Democrats party?!
Is there a previous instance?
I was a young college student in 1964, and I had three (I think) Dick Gregory records. He was, in my strongly-held opinion, way more effective sticking the needle into people than he was as an angry serial hunger striker.
By the time I was settled and could have "had him over for dinner when it wasn't National Brotherhood Week" he was a pretty uninteresting individual.
Not a surprise to me that the Times got the year of the 9/11 attack wrong. They tend to be bad about minor details of out of town events.
Oh, wait.
Gee, I thought he died a long time ago.
I never talk to black people, because they're clairvoyant, so there's no need.
I remember him being funny before he started that self-starvation.
I saw him speak when I was in graduate school. He was an articulate opponent of the Vietnam war.
He spoke at my college in the 70s was convinced the govt was spying on us thru our TVs.
He performed his finals shows as a stand-up comedian at the club in Denver where I worked in the mid-70s. He said, and announced on stage, that he wasn't going to perform at nightclubs any more because they served alcohol and promoted unhealthy lifestyles. He was shockingly gaunt from fasting and looked ill, talk about your unhealthy lifestyles: he had that weird glitter in his eyes that dying people sometimes have and his eyes were deeply sunken and his face looked like dry black parchment or like the face of an unwrapped Egyptian mummy. After his final performance each night he would sit around with us and shoot the bull and he was an okay guy, actually a nice guy, and his final performances were humorous (and performed to an audience of about 15 people) but he went on and on about fasting and conspiracies, wouldn't talk about anything else. He would smile and speak very earnestly about some vast conspiracy perpetrated by the government or the Illuminati or the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderbergs etc., and he would look at you with his glittery intense sunken eyes and his weird smile and it gave you the chills to see a man who was at once so smart and articulate and -- looney. But still, for all that, he was very likeable. I felt kind of sorry for him.
I remember him fat and funny a long time ago.
Then in 1976, I was doing a puppet show touring through the eastern us, and my partner on the tour got me to go raw food vegan for a few months, all the way down and through Florida.
By that point, mr. Gregory was right in there with raw food, and I picked up his paperback book, called something like "recipes for people who want to eat" and I tell you: raw food vegans are hungry all the time, I needed his comfort, assurance and ideas.
He had a terrific combo I called citric Joy, perfect for the Florida miles: the juice of 2 grapefruit, two lemons and six oranges.
Man, was that a terrific brew, perfectly balanced sweet/tart/complex
Otherwise my food was nuts and raisins, tomatoes and melon, and an enlightening season.
Ever after, I could not help but have a smiling gratitude for the Man, rest in Peace.
I believe what he actually said (at the top) was "We don't have it as much as we used to" ... referring to the black clairvoyance.
"He spoke at my college in the 70s was convinced the govt was spying on us thru our TVs."
Up until, say, 10 years ago, I would have scoffed at such craziness. But now we have Big Data and the internet of things that track our moves.
My all boys New England prep school had him speak to us in '73. The faculty fawned over him but I just remember thinking that it was just virtue signaling on their part. He left no impression what so ever. Could have been talking about the weather for all I can recall.
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