Paul Mooney Cites Richards in N-Word Ban
By ERIN TEXEIRA
AP National Writer
For decades, Paul Mooney has left people howling with laughter and cringing at the same time. During a typical routine by the black comedian - mostly about the screwy state of race in America - the n-word could roll off his tongue dozens of times.
No longer.
This week, after white comic Michael Richards harangued comedy club hecklers with the n-word, Mooney surprisingly renounced the slur. He vowed never to use it in public again, and said he would campaign to get all blacks to stop using it.
Since the 1970s, Mooney has operated at the highest levels of black comedy - writing for artists such as Richard Pryor (who was largely responsible for mainstreaming the word) and Redd Foxx and television shows like "In Living Color" and "Good Times." He's performed countless standup routines, been in movies and on television, most recently Comedy Central's enormously popular but now-defunct "The Dave Chappelle Show," where he anchored sketches like Negrodamus (a black version of the psychic Nostradamus) and "Ask a Black Dude."
AP: Can you tell me a joke that you've told in the past with the n-word and show me how you'll change it?
Mooney: There was a white lady baking a cake for her little white son. She turned her back and he took the chocolate icing and smeared it on his face and said, 'Mommy, look! I'm black!' She slaps him and says, 'Don't ever do that again. Now go tell your father what you did.' So the boy goes to his father and does the same thing and gets slapped again. The father sends him to his grandfather and he does it again and the grandfather slaps him, too. So the boy goes back to his mother and she says, 'Well, Timmy, what have you learned today?' He says, 'I learned I've only been black five minutes and I already hate white people.'
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WATCH ASK A BLACK DUDE FROM THE CHAPPELLE SHOW (pre-N Word Ban of course)
