The NYTimes has permission to flash me messages. So they flashed me a message informing me that Eddie Murphy will not be the host of the Oscars. My first reaction before reading the story was that perhaps he has come down with a heinous illness. That would be sad, because now that Heavy D is gone, Murphy remains one of the few icons I associate with my youth and the real culture I lived. That's an odd sentiment and somewhat multicultural, but I was just thinking this morning about how unfunny Gilda Radner was upon retrospect. In fact, I remember a whole lot of time I spent trying to laugh along with Coneheads consuming mass quantities of beer. It's not that I didn't get it, but how long can that be funny? it can't. So if you ask me, Saturday Night Live was where comedians went to grow tired and still have an audience, and in that regard stands well in the tradition of Cats and other perennial Broadway shows for the benefit of the sort of tourist who thinks Chevy Chase was awfully good looking. Don't get me started about Caddyshack.
Eddie Murphy, on the other hand, had the quality of genius comedy that was truly rare, discounting as we must his ability to exploit every stereotype known to black man. Still, he turned them on their heads enough times to keep me in stitches. Murphy stands with Billy Crystal, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison and Steven Wright as one of the best. I should do a top 20 list one of these days. But the point about Murphy is that he brought black American comedy up to date and into the mainstream. He changed what American comedy could do and say as profoundly as Bruce, Pryor and Carlin before him. It's sorry to see how many sad imitators came after him. Murphy knew he made profanity look easier and funnier that it was and that his gift was greater than vulgarity.
The reason Murphy quit the Oscars was because his business partner, Brett Ratner who was a co-producer of the Oscar show, got booted over a tempest over his language. The Daily Mail gives us some clues:
Ratner used a pejorative term to describe gay men in response to a question asked at a screening of his latest movie.
In his apology he said sorry 'for any offense my remarks caused,' adding that the slur was 'a dumb and outdated way of expressing myself.'
He said that 'as a storyteller I should have been much more thoughtful about the power of language and my choice of words.'
Initially Sherak said Ratner's remarks were 'inappropriate' - but said the academy had no plans to remove him from his Oscar-producing position.
On Monday, Ratner also recorded an expletive-laden interview with shock jock Howard Stern.
In the revealing interview, he discussed oral sex, masturbation and the size of his testicles.
He admitted he was stunned he had never impregnated anyone because of his virility: 'How lucky I am that I never got a girl pregnant. It's crazy.'
He boasted a doctor had told him he had 10 times the sperm count of an average man his age.
He also claimed he asked Lindsay Lohan to get an STD test when they allegedly slept together when she was 19.
This is an action by what is popularly known as Hollywood's Gay Mafia. They have big toes and one is well-advised not to step on them. Note the carefully worded apologies, if you can stomach that sort of thing.
I only stop to mention this sort of fake high-mindedness to note how important things other than property have become amongst those who have it. Again, I am about halfway through Niall Ferguson's 'Civilization: The West and the Rest' and he is discussing the failed revolution of Simon Bolivar and the way in which the different attitude towards property and franchise were dealt with in North and South America. The key and important matter of civilization is that property owners not be dispossessed of their good for arbitrary reasons outside of the law. So is hosting an awards show about free speech? No. It's a private affair hosted by wealthy people and attended by wealthy people. So they can pick and choose. But neither the anonymous homosexuals nor were Ratner & Murphy's rights abridged. This is just a courtly bitchfight nothing of which has any standing in a real civilized court.
I look at the powers that be in Hollywood and the current mediasphere knowing with growing certainty that they will not be disintermediated so much as marginalized in the new greater economy of literacy that the internet is providing. Fewer people will care about the Oscars, and more people will see with transparency the hypocrisy of those who pretend to defend the honor and integrity of homosexuals. You will hear that the recusals will be about rights, but they are only about image.
Murphy will get the benefit of my doubt as someone who is fed up with the charade. I'm going to check out Dennis Miller's opinion on the matter as well.
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