Before Dave Chappelle, before Chris Rock, before Eddie Murphy there was Richard Pryor. Pryor starred in a series of movies with Gene Wilder (establishing the black comedian/white sidekick film genre), but was mainly known for his live comedy act. In 2004, for instance, Comedy Central named him the greatest stand-up comic ever. Pryor introduced scores of young people to four-letter words of varying lengths just as he introduced the nation to the concept of smoking, or freebasing, cocaine when he nearly killed himself in 1980 during what was described as a freebasing session gone bad. Hard living gave way to hard dying. After hitting his peak in the late '70s/early '80s, Pryor was scarcely heard or seen. Sidelined by self-immolation, drug problems, heart ailments, multiple sclerosis, and other maladies, it is amazing that Pryor ever became a senior citizen. Richard Pryor, 65, rest in peace.

I'll never forget the look on my Moms face. I was 14. She came home from work, and there was I, with my best friend from down street, listening to a Pryor albumn I had checked out from the library. I always enjoyed his comedy. He will be missed.

One of my more memorable Richard Pryor bits was his faith healer who was charging for his services. A severly lame boy comes up and says "Brother, make me run like a deer!", to which the healer replies after a preganant pause "You askin' a who lot fo' two dollas boy! Get ovah der wit da the blind man and the deaf mute!"

The man was a classic, and though he led at times a torutred life, he will be sorely missed.

While I have often laughed at Pryor's humor, myself and I feel for those closest to him for their loss, at the same time, I have to acknowledge his role in the decline of America.

Along with Lenny Bruce, George Carlin and those who followed in their footsteps (Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle, et al), Pryor added his voice and influence to the gradual erosion of common decency and civility in our culture that has occurred over the last forty years or so.

To say we support conservative values on the one hand, yet not only condone, but contribute to the eclipse of those very same values by indulging the lewd, the salacious and the perverse in our culture at the same time seems hypocritical to me.

Important points, Gary. Pryor was at the top when I was a young kid. I felt "peer pressure" to like him the way kids and young teens feel pressure to try marijuana, steal a candy bar, or look at porn. That is, even if you don't indulge in any of these things, or if you do and you're not sure you want to again, you're still anxious at being able to hold your own when talk next comes round to them. There's a leap kids had to make - like it or not and ready or not - from "F Troop" to "Stripes", or from "Mork & Mindy" to "10". Maybe it's just boys, or maybe it's just me, and maybe it's inevitable. But I don't think so.

Was Pryor a ground breaker? Yes. But he wasn't the only or most important one to break ground.

I think that people felt a lot of social pressure to think that Pryor was fall down, gut splitting funny. Especially from comfortable white people who were eager to prove their open-mindedness by accepting of an off center foul mouth minority comic.

He was certainly talented and one of the best but like a lot of things that started in the 60's and 70's, there was a lot of peer pressure to find a common path to the culture at the time.

Drugs, music, movies, comedy. Many claimed to like the same things but down deep were too uncomfortable to be truthful.

It was in this environment that a lot of mediocrity flourised.

When I was eleven, I remember going over to a
friend's house (whose mother wasn't home)
and listening to a Richard Pryor album.
The album was called "That N*****'s Crazy!"
While I do remember laughing hysterically, I also remember feeling kind of sorry for my friend
because his mom was gone so much of the time.
(she was a working alcoholic)

My mom and dad would never have allowed me to listen to that kind of humor.If they had known I was listening to it at his house, I'm sure they wouldn't have let me hang around with him.

Believe me, after she heard that albumn, I was never allowed to check another comedy albumn out with out her permission. I always enjoyed the bit about his "benefit sparring" with Ali. Still cracks me up. I do agree with Gary's points however. Years ago, I didn't think of that with regards to Pryor or Kinison. Now I do.

Rest in Peace, Mutha-F*&*(&...

I've been watching Richard Pryor since i was a kid up until now. I've had four Richard Pryor DVDs sitting on my coffee table for the past week and the guy still makes me laugh.

Richard Pryor, RIP.

I'm seeing a pattern among the responses to this piece. Most of you have said that you've been watching Pryor and others like him since you were kids; i.e., basically, all your lives. I contend that this is what contributes to the differences in our perspective on things.

When I was a kid, highly politcially charged content and vulgarity and obscenity were totally absent from not only comedy, but most of society, as well. It wasn't a result of censorship, either, for there was no one but a handful of scum trying to foist such crap on the public then and these folks weren't even a blip on the radar in the fifties and early sixties, when I was a boy. Censorship hadn't yet become necessary to keep such filth out of the public eye because most people, at that time, were honest, decent folks who never had such thoughts in their minds to begin with. It was quite a different world then than it has become today.

Given the different era in which many of you grew up, it is no wonder, then, that you accept, to a greater degree than I have, the vulgar and the lewd in today's entertainment. For you, it has always existed and there has never been a time in which it hasn't. You lack anything to contrast it with and that is the chief difference between our generations. I have grown up in a different world and watched it slowly, insidiouly transformed into exactly the opposite of what it once was, in so many ways.

Doing away with those who have any memory of how things used to be is one of the tactics used by every communist regime that has ever existed. In America, where the Left's campaign has been largely underground and deliberately disguised to look mainstream and harmless, the tactic has been to slowly, gradually and insidiously chip away at the foundations and institutions of American society until, one day in the future, there is no distinguishing America from the socialist countries of Europe. One of the chief means of acheiving that goal is to undermine America's moral fiber. If you think the shift toward the sleaze we see on our TV screens today has been coincidental, harmless and unintentional, ask yourself why it is that the ACLU (founded by communist radical Roger Baldwin in 1920) has used the courts and activist judges to legalize pornography, to have pornography protected by "free speech" legislation, to decriminalize child rape (the ACLU works pro bono in support of NAMBLA) and so on. Ask yourself why the Democrats, as well as many leftist organizations support the ACLU's activities.

In another fifty years or so, my generation, the last to witness the gradual shift in American society toward the left, will be gone and with us, our perspective on the changes that have occurred within our lifetime. History is already being re-written for our children so that they will have no knowledge of the past that corresponds to the truth of history. When the Boomer generation is ultimately gone, there will be no one left on earth who remembers what America once was before the radical left began to alter it.

The Left wants us to ignore the big picture and to not see how every aspect of American life is tied together, how everything we do and say is a reflection of us as a nation. They want you to see only comedy, to believe that it has no significance other than a few laughs while watching Comedy Central. They want you to dissociate the vulgarity in comedy from what is happening in society at large. They want you to be incapable of seeing how this relates to human behavior and how attitudes and morals are being slowly eroded by it. When TV becomes nothing but the vulgar and the lewd, there will be nothing to contrast this against becausee it will all be vulgar and lewd. It will be the norm and the norm is accepted with passive resignation by all. Yes, it's "only" comedy, but comedy is a segment of entertainment and when America's entertainment is saturated by vulgarity Americans will no longer see it as vulgarity. This is what is happening right before our very eyes, but it has happened over the course of a generation or two, so we don't notice it. That is the significance of the difference in my perspective of history and yours.

Gary,

The preceding is another excellent post and it ties in with your other observations with regards to the Global Warming scan and the left’s quiet agenda.

It is interesting that the left, with the help of the MSM and Hollywood, has been quietly chipping away at values that have made America the great country it is (was?) and have tried to gradually replace those values with their own warped view of the world to ultimately obfuscate reality and confuse the general public.

They are bombarding the public with concepts and symbols that the overall public really doesn't want and using fear to advance concepts that have no basis in truth. Much to our disappointment, some are taking hold.

A recent example is this #ay cowboy movie. The media is touting ‘Brokeback Mountain’ as one of the best movies of all time and already are lining it up for Oscars even though it has played to limited audiences (in predominantly #ay locales). Then there’s Capote and Transamerica, two other #ay themed movies that are getting big press.

Personally, I believe that people’s preferences are up to them and should be respected. But why, if not just to break down certain mainstream barriers, has there been so much focus on this and other movies of the genre?

I think you’re right, traditional values and morals are being chipped away at little by little (and sometimes little by a lot) and we need to be aware before this country socially disintegrates.

I've only seen clips from "Brokeback Mountain," and have o desire to see anything more of it, but, one thing I noticed is that it uses the same tactic used in other such movies and TV shows, i.e., using actors who look and sound like ordinary men, or even like typical male stereotypes (as the Village People deliberately did). I believe the intent is to neutralize opposition to gays by making them appear as normal and mainstream as the rest of us.

As for whether homosexuality is a purely a lifestyle choice, I tend to think the majority of gays are born that way or develop that way, though I acknowledge that many are former heterosexuals who have chosen to go that route. I'm not suggesting, however, that a genetic cause for homosexuality is an excuse for it. I view it as an abominable genetic defect that thwarts one's biological instinct to reproduce. As such, it is nothing more than another genetic disease that, presumably, has a cure yet to be discovered. Of course, I'll be labled a Eugenecist, homophobe and bigot for saying so.

The thing that bothers me the most about this is the attempted normalization of h0m0sectuality as a sectual lifestyle by using stereotypical macho men images (such as the cowboy) to show that it is ok even among those whose heterosectuality would not be in question.

Sets a different standard and lowers the bar for that sort of thing, so to speak.

Hey, each to their own, but when will they stop trying to convince us that it works for everybody and that the minority is really a bigger part of the majority that it truly is?

I guess benign acceptance is not enough. For some, it has to be something that’s forcibly ingrained in the culture which leads me back to this being a good example of the bigger problem of weakening our culture by breaking down social norms.

I see the "gay community's" efforts to promote their agenda as more than simply an attempt to paint themsleves as mainstream. I've seen some evidence that many among them are trying to promote the view that homosexuality is not merely "normal," but somehow superior to heterosexuality, much in the same way radical feminists have gone far beyond saying mene and women should be equals. Feminazis like Maureen Dowd actually fantasize about an all-female world, so I have no doubt that many radical gay men have a similar vision for the world. Dowd proposes to continue the female population by "keeping a few sperm slaves around" that would be "milked periodically." I suppose any males born would simply be aborted or euthanized to keep the female population pure. Of course, any woman who has a tendency to give birth to males would be eliminated, as well. I suppose in the radical faggot world, an all-male homosexual population would be maintained by similarly draconian methods.