He's Making Heaven Laugh
Bernie Mac October 5, 2007 to August 9, 2008

It was a shock when tolling through my email I saw an alert from the Chicago Tribune that comedian and actor Bernie Mac had died. Just bringing to mind his face makes me smile. He was funny in that way that took our culture and justified it. Lately, the Tom Joyner Show played a clip of his act and the topic was how black folks could tell a whole story using the expletive m*ther f*cker and everybody listening would understand. Not only did he demonstrate his point by producing a story about a man trying to collect a debt but his story made sense and was very familiar to me. I heard the piece during the week about four times and I laughed as hard the fourth time as the first because the story was familiar and while there were no names to his characters I certainly had heard the real life version of the story and could name those characters myself.

I love smart observant comedians like Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Robin Harris, and Bernie Mack. Those guys had the "touch" with their humor. Bad children are still called Baybay kids. I am to this day mindful of accumulating "stuff." When you go to the court house looking for justice there is still "just us" there. And m*ther f*cker will always be a noun for me. You rest in peace guys. Heaven is a whole lot funnier now.