Tom Joyner Blog: The Power of One

I’ve spent much of my career working with Black comedians – some of them A-listers who have risen from the comedy clubs up the food chain to cable TV, talk show host/movie star, network sitcom star/radio show host and back down again. For everyone’s who’s really made it, I can name you five that should have and another five funnier than the funniest network late night talk show hosts.

But for the longest time, the powers that be have used a sort of quota system to keep the majority of Black comedians at one level, only elevating one or two at a time. This is especially true over the last 15 years or so.  Things were different back in the 70s. At least it seemed like they were.

Redd Foxx, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby were all thriving comedians who transitioned from the stage to film and TV. If there was beef amongst them, we didn’t know about it. Of course, there was no Twitter back then either.

Maybe Redd Foxx did call Bill Cosby on his rotary phone and curse him out, but if that did happen, they kept it to themselves.

I recently asked Sinbad, one of the best, what was going on with comedians like Mike Epps, who recently had a Twitter beef with Kevin Hart and then instigated a physical altercation with another comic. (By the way, Kevin and Mike have mended their conflict and publicly announced that they’re still cool.)

Bad broke it down like this. He said that Black comedians are pitted against each other because only one can achieve mainstream Golden Boy status, even though there are many who are just as funny. He’s absolutely right. Kevin Hart is funny, but I’ll bet he would be the first to admit that he isn’t the funniest of all the black comedians working right now.

In 1998, if you recall, Chris Rock made the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. He was dressed as a clown and the coverline read “To Be Young, Gifted and the Funniest Man in America.” I think Rock was and is hilarious, but being hailed as the funniest man in America is a lot of pressure for anyone, especially a brother. Rock had nowhere to go but down after getting that label, and I’m beginning to think that was by design.

Let’s be clear. As Rock pointed out on Hart’s Real Husbands of Hollywood, there’s a big difference in being popular with black audiences and popular with mainstream audiences.

The Kings of Comedy’s (Steve Harvey, Cedric the Entertainer, Bernie Mac and D.L. Hughley) success doesn’t compare with kind of money and access to projects that comedians like Rock, Whoopi Goldberg, Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby commanded at one time. The Cosby Show was TV’s biggest hit of the 80s and its said to have revived the sitcom genre.

Could it be that after Cosby’s success took him into a whole new stratosphere, it became important for mainstream America to have just one Black Super (funny) Man at a time?

Sinbad, Chris Tucker, Katt Williams, D.L.Hughley and Dave Chappelle have each had their shots. But when Hollywood was done with them, they were forced to go back home to the Black audiences that supported them from the start. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but explains the bitterness some comedians have expressed over the years.

Are Black comedians waiting for Hart’s star to dim so that they can get their shot? Probably so. Is that fair to Kevin? Probably not. To his credit, he’s put a lot of black people to work and seems like he may be trying to beat mainstream Hollywood at its own game. Only time will tell if he succeeds.

It doesn’t seem to matter how many openings for network late-night hosts become available if there’s room for just one… and that’s if we’re lucky. Cable is wide open for a diverse crop of Black comedians, male and female, but ABC, NBC and CBS have a type they’re not willing to change.

Knowing what I know about the hundreds of black comedians that will never be considered, I can only say it’s mainstream America’s loss.

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