Tariq Nelson

It’s been less than a month, and the angry rhetoric of victimization already seems tired. This is not to say that everything has changed in this short amount of time, but there is a new perspective on things now: working hard, striving for excellence, boundless optimism, and inspiring confidence. Besides, people are just tired of being angry.

Even comedians - as the article below states - will have to come up with new material. I suspect some may take a page out of Dave Chappelle’s playbook and lampoon the angry conspiracy nuts - some of whom, by the way, still think (dare I say hope) that George Bush is going to pull off a coup on his last day of office and implement a fascist state.

When Richard Pryor appeared as a black president in a skit on “Saturday Night Live” in 1977, it was his angry black street patter that got the laughs. Now that the one-time fantasy has become reality, African-American keepers of the national funny bone are having to reassess much of their material.

Can they rail against the establishment now that a black man’s in charge?

African-American comedian Joe Holt had the audience howling at the Los Angeles Improv Nov. 2, with his portrayal of a fictitious presidential debate moderated by his own father, playing the stereotypical, angry street black: “Obama, where do you get off?”

“Uh, well, I, uh, will tell you exactly where I get off. I am going to help Joe the Plumber, end the recession, and restore sight to the blind.”

[...]

If the 2008 election signals a sea change in American racial and class attitudes, the first signs are likely to come from African-American comedians. At comedy venues all over Los Angeles, they’re trying out new material about Obama – his nearly angelic politeness, his youth, vigor, good looks, and model family.

[...]

“We can’t just rely on the woe-is-me clichés anymore,” he says in an interview. Dealing with being hopeful is much trickier than relying on the social barriers against blacks, he adds. “The audacity of hope was his mission and he was successful with that, and we are going to have to go as far as we can with that.”

Ditto for John Henton, a two-decade veteran of the “The Tonight Show” as well as the “The Arsenio Hall Show.” Mr. Henton says he is already working up a bit based on the fact that wife Michelle is taller and huskier than Barack.

“Barack is kind of skinny, and so I’m figuring they don’t have arguments, they have fights,” says Henton. “One day Barack will appear at a press conference with a Band-Aid, get asked about it, and reply, ‘I fell, I’m clumsy. Next question.’ “

That is not funny because it is not true. That one will bomb

“Truth be told, only hack, outdated comedians relying on the word ‘black’ are going to be affected; everyone else is going to be inspired,” says Patryce Harris, an L.A.-based African-American comedienne. “You’ll see a lot more intelligent, observational, and middle-class humor like Chris Rock, and a lot less blue-collar humor like Martin Lawrence.”

Martin Lawrence’s “fish out of water” angry black man routine was tired long before now. No one can even take him seriously when he is trying to be serious. And it’s not funny when he is trying to be funny.

Humor historians agree.

Obama’s election is a “momentous occasion, a game-changer for many blacks as they readjust their perspective on what’s possible,” says Joseph Boskin, professor emeritus of history at Boston University and author of “Humor and Social Change in Twentieth Century America.” “Many black comedians who have based their humor in victim mentality are going to have to reassess.”

[...]

Racism isn’t dead, but “this notion that things are so rough for blacks is a dead horse that doesn’t play well anymore,” says Mr. Holt. His new idea: “There’s something that I want to work up into a set, which is that there’s a whole world of black men who are angry because they don’t have an excuse now.”

I think there are also some opportunities to ridicule the black helicopter right - who are trying to make a come back.

Filed under: Changing World