Monday, December 1, 2014

Chris Rock

If I can be half as insightful once per month as Chris Rock is nearly every time he opens his mouth, I'd be happy. (Not yet a fan? Check out Bring the Pain, his comedy special which I listed among singular human accomplishments here.)

Check out this deliciously long interview with Frank Rich. Highlights:
I would love to see Hillary [run for president], but there’s a part of Hillary that’s like the Democratic McCain at this point. As he showed, “It’s my time” is not really enough.

[Frank Rich]: Obama came out of nowhere, basically. At which point Bill Clinton started making public statements that often seemed one step away from knifing Obama.

[Chris Rock]: He’s a dick, but you’re talking about a guy who’s embarrassed his wife. So he had a choice, and I couldn’t judge him. I had to choose between pissing off all the black people in the world or having my wife mad at me? Then the hell with the black people, because he doesn’t live with all the black people. He lives with his wife.

[Rich]: Even though he was the first black president.

[Rock]: Allegedly. Until a black guy showed up.

[Rich] Do you think [Obama] has had any effect on pop culture?

[Rock]I’m not sure. I mean, time will tell, and what I mean by “time will tell” is: We’ll see who gets into politics. That’s the real test. In a weird way, him saying he listens to Jay Z — it’s kind of revolutionary, because he’s of the age that he’s supposed to listen to that stuff. And so he’s a little more himself than most politicians. We’ll see if more politicians end up being just themselves.

The thing about George Bush is that the kid revolutionized the presidency. How? He was the first president who only served the people who voted for him. He literally operated like a cable network. You know what I mean?

[Bush was] the first cable-television president, and the thing liberals don’t like about Obama is that he’s a network guy. He’s kind of Les Moonves. He’s trying to get everybody. And I think he’s figured out, and maybe a little late, that there’s some people he’s never going to get.

When Obama first got elected, he should have let it all just drop. Just let the country flatline. Let the auto industry die. Don’t bail anybody out. In sports, that’s what any new GM does. They make sure that the catastrophe is on the old management and then they clean up. They don’t try to save old management’s mistakes. Let it all go to hell knowing good and well this is on them. That way you can implement.

When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before. So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years.

My children are going to be the first black children in the history of America to actually have the benefit of the doubt of just being moral, intelligent people.

We always say ignorance is bliss. Well, if so, what’s the opposite? Some form of misery. Being a comedian, 80 percent of the job is just you notice shit, which is a trait of schizophrenics too. You notice things people don’t notice.

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