Aug. 30, 2007 *
THE STRIP SENSE
In Vegas, Let the N-Word
By STEVE FRIESS
When it first happened, we were sure the remarks would prompt
angry protests, demands for discipline, outrage and shock and
righteous indignation. Instead, bafflingly, they prompted nothing
of the sort.
The Amazing Johnathan is an edgy comic magician over at the
Sahara who will be moving shortly to the Riviera. He's been
around Las Vegas forever, packs a good, consistent crowd and
makes regular appearances on Comedy Central. And on Aug. 9,
he came on our weekly celebrity-interview podcast "The Strip"
and let loose the n-word five times and the c-word twice.
Our listeners around the world were certainly stunned. They
wrote in droves debating whether what was stated was offensive,
what he meant, whether his use of the word "honky" was equally
alarming, whether we should have bleeped out the words or not.
African-American activists, however, took a startling pass.
Las Vegas Review-Journal's Norm Clarke said he didn't even get
the courtesy of returned calls or emails from leaders of the
National Association of Black Journalists, which led the charge
to have Don Imus fired earlier this year and who were coincidentally
meeting in Vegas the day
he lead his column with Johnathan's remarks. Some of our
black listeners told us they wrote to the NAACP, the NABJ and
other civil rights groups but similarly heard no answers.
What did Johnathan say? You can see a longer transcript of
this sequence by clicking here
or listen to a clip
of the remarks here. But to summarize, in rant over the
ill effects of political correctness in comedy, Johnathan responded
to my question of what should've happened in the Richards case
thusly:
"What I think should've happened is, well, the manager should've
thrown the black people out. That's what I think should've happened.
If they were heckling him during the show, they were wrong.
And anything you do, if you're heckling a comic and interrupting
a show, you're a n---- at that point, you know what I mean,
in my eyes. You're not an audience member, you're not a friend,
you are the worst possible scenario. You're disrupting my job,
so you're a n----. I wouldn't yell that word out and tell them
that, I would have handled it a little bit more differently.
If I did use that word, it would've been funny. I mean, I've
called women in the audience c---s and I've gotten away with
it because they were c---s but I did it right. There is a way
to do it right."
Since that prompted no reaction from African-American forces,
we've been pondering why. Is it that Johnathan's not a big enough
star for their bother? That would be an odd way to decide what
to be offended by - and give an awful lot of license to an awful
lot of people to use the word willy-nilly. And it's also not
true; Johnathan is arguable a bigger star than Richards, who
had one claim to fame and wasn't even selling out the Laugh
Factory when he was heckled into insanity.
Perhaps the NAACP, having "buried" the n-word recently, is
over it? (I posit that facetiously, actually.) Or maybe it's
that there's no video, a la the Richards or Imus things? That
could be, but the odd thing here is that Richards used the words
in anger in a momentary loss of control and Imus was attempting,
however badly, to be funny. Johnathan essentially defined what
he believes a "n-----" to be in a way that offers real insight
into his thought process.
No, I don't buy any of that. What this silence reflects is
how the liberal elite view Las Vegas. They'd rather react to
things that emerge in the coastal media - Hollywood, D.C. or
New York - even though Vegas is where real Americans come for
an awful lot of their entertainment.
In Vegas, we can only conclude, performers are free to say
or do whatever they wish because the city and its entertainment
offerings are already believed to be crass, low-brow and inconsequential.
I can't decide if that's a victory for free speech or a defeat
for good taste.
Hear the entire Amazing Johnathan show here.
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