David Alan Grier and DL Hughley Have New Comedy/News Shows, Should We Be Frightened?

I guess it would be too much to ask Dave Chappelle to come back.

This doesn't mean that I don't think comedians David Alan Grier and DL Hughley deserve their own shows ...

What am I saying? They're the last two black comics who should have their own shows. Katt Williams should have his own show before these two and I'm not even a fan, so ... seriously cable networks -- Grier and Hughley?

It's not that I didn't think they could pull off a good show. I know they can't pull off a good show. I watched most of Grier's Chocolate News and Hughley's DL Hughley Breaks the News through my fingers.

Both have the ability to be funny in their moments, but I don't think Grier's been funny since he stop directly working with someone for "Wayans" as a last name. And Hughley, to me, has never been funny. I've always found his comedy mean spirited, petty and unimaginative. (But he was really nice that one time I interviewed him for work!) But Comedy Central and CNN did not ask me which black comics would be good at a politically-based comedy show.

(Aisha Tyler, anyone? She's smart and funny. Anyone! Did they even bother calling her? Chris Rock? Steve Harvey? Wanda Sykes? -- Non sequitor: God, I'd LOVE to watch Wanda Sykes do a political comedy show with Aisha Tyler. They could invite Monique and do an all black girl parody of The View. Jasmine Guy could play the Barbara Walters character! Wait ... no one steal my show idea! I have to make some phone calls! -- Marlon Wayans could do a show. Hell, even Sinbad or Arsenio Hall would have been good and both those guys need a second bite at the apple.)

But nope, no one asked me. So this is what we have:

A recent skit from Grier's "Chocolate News" on "Thugs Against High Gas Prices."

A clip of DL Hughley talking to Freddie Mac, not the mortgage giant, but "Ashy Larry" as Freddie the Mac Daddy of Federal Loan Financing.

Both shows are "edgy," and by edgy I mean profane because, really, that's appears to be the only kind of edgy that matters. Grier, while not exactly Eddie Murphy, manages to pull off playing a multitude of characters, but seeing him still makes me think of In Living Color and thinking of In Living Color only makes me wonder if Chocolate News would be more palatable to me if it was Damon and Keenan running the show again? Wouldn't it be better to see seven black performers with a job rather than two? Or to just see all those Wayanses hire themselves to put on a show again? Yeah, "Little Man" was an embarrassment, but I say, c'mon, TV, give them another chance! They can be good again!

As for Hughley's show I was amazed by the "shut your mouth bitches" line from Ashy Larry, if only because I'm watching CNN. It's one thing to be wild and raunchy on Comedy Central, home of everything raunchy in comedy, they have no morals. They show Sarah Silverman with a potty mouth and a bed-wetting problem, South Park and that gross Kenny Versus Spenny thing that I hope to dear God was canceled.

Seeing Grier play a transsexual whose boob keeps popping out is actually at home in that environment. But Hughley is his own island on a network that is primarily about straight news. And it is surreal and painful to watch actual reporters interact with Hughley as opposed to joke reporters like the ones on Chocolate News and The Daily Show. Real reporters are not funny and I image the ones who showed up for Hughley's premiere episode were wondering why CNN was wasting their news gathering time? You work hard, you pound the pavement, you pester sources and you beg your producer for camera time and this is what they give you?

Hughley seems out of place on the network, even if he did get a newsworthy nugget out of yet another defecting Republican, this time former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan who said last week that he is voting for Barack Obama on Hughley's show. I hate to say this, but ... Glen Beck's show made more sense. Now, I don't like Glen Beck and Beck has run off to FOX News, leaving his old gig at CNN Headline News, but Beck was/is supposed to be funny and did a political/news-of-the-day interview show that didn't make me want to drink Drano. It would have made more sense for CNN to find someone not necessarily like Beck, but someone with his basic skills set, like Whoopi Goldberg, Dennis Miller or Lewis Black, heck, Eddie Murphy might do it if you ask nice enough, but someone who has the ability to be funny and can also pull off a decent interview.

Naturally, I wasn't the only person "amazed" by Hughley's show. Dr. Boyce Watkins (and many other critics, primarily black) are pretty much ready to grab the pitchforks and torches and send DL back to the comedy plantation from wince he came.

In the following clip, Watkins shouts out every black comedian as being cool-to-great with the exception of Hughley who he says he's never been impressed by.

"You don't bring a gun to a baby shower. You don't put a liquor sign in a church," Watkins gripes, before getting into the flip side of it, that CNN has had many black commentators and journalists, yet the first African American to get their own show on CNN is DL, a comedian. Watkins name drops Roland Martin, mentioning that he's been on a regular on CNN for a while yet has no show.

Um ... yeah. I noticed that too.

Here's Watkins' rant in full where he declares DL America's latest "nappy headed ho" in reference to statements DL made during the infamous Don Imus/Rutgers Women's Basketball team scandal. (Fast-forward to 1:52 minutes in to skip Watkins rambling about his recent trips around the country.)

Officially, as a lover of the First Amendment and a believer in our often messed up free market economy, I am all for Grier and Hughley getting the same opportunities to humiliate themselves and other black people on television just as countless individuals have done before. Their shows might get better. It might pave the way to Aisha Tyler eventually having her own show, but I'm probably not going to make the point to pencil in Hughley and Chocolate News as must-see-TV unless something revolutionary happens in the writing of the shows. These shows were not made for me.

Which takes me to Watkins' other concern about DL -- that this show, much like CNN's "Black In America" and DL's statements about Don Imus, aren't for or about black people -- that this is humor insulting black Americans to delight a non-black audience. Is Watkins right? Whereas I, the women at What About Our Daughters and Watkins saw something of concern, David Zurawik, a critic with The Baltimore Sun, thought the premiere showed promise.

(I)t looks like CNN could have a winner in its new comedy show, D.L. Hughley Breaks the News. And more important, Saturday night television and its audience could be enriched by Hughley's engaging and non-conventional take on American life -- if the cable channel gives the production time to mature and find its voice.

Is this a case of black Snobs like myself and Watkins being too hard on a pair of successful black comedians or is this yet another case of great for the performer, bad for all of blackness played out in front of a live studio audience yet again?

SNL Goes B-A-N-A-N-A-S With John McCain, Keith Olbermann, Tina Fey, Ben Affleck, The View and more

I don't know if taking time out for Saturday Night Live in the middle of a heated campaign was a smooth move for John McCain, but it was a hilarious move.

Reliving some of his SNL glory days, John McCain did a great parody of John McCain (including the nervous blinking, but I don't think he was doing that on purpose), with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, perfect as ever ... going rogue by threatening to never leave the national stage. It's either the White House or "the white Oprah." Brava and bravo, Fey and McCain.

McCain was also pretty good on the Weekend Update segment introducing new political moves like "The Double Maverick" and "The Sad Grandpa" in which he said the strategy was to whine that Obama would have plenty of chances to be president and it was McCain's turn. Once again, what will SNL do once this is all over? The comedy show will be doing a special election episode on Monday on NBC.

The show also had some fun at MSNBC's Keith Olbermann expense. The sketch was a bit wordy and ran long (just like My Fair Keithy). It was also more than eight minutes and starred the evenings co-host Ben Affleck who kept cracking himself up while trying to shout all his lines. It eventually hit the funny button hard when Affleck did a cheesy send up of Olbermann's sometimes self-righteous "Special Comments" by making it about him trying to get a three bedroom apartment that wouldn't take him because he owned a cat. A fluffy, white, fey as all get out, cat.

There was even a sketch of "The View" and while it wasn't as good as the above three, if you closed your eyes Kristen Wiig's Elisabeth Hasselbeck was so good it was horrifying. Fred Armisen's Joy Behar was both right and wrong and one-dimensional and Joy's not that bad. As for Kennan, your Whoopi sucked, but you're the only black person on the show. I guess you can only do so much with what they give you. And Casey New Girl What's Your Face? That was a Jennifer Aniston parody? Was that the ONLY celeb they could think for you to do (or the only celeb you could do)? Lame, new girl. Very lame.

David Letterman: Still Bitter!

Hell hath no fury like a Letterman scorned. Maybe it's just me, but I think Dave might be taking this a tad personal.

Why I Heart Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert

See! Now that's satire. I get exactly what that is supposed to be about. It's pitch freakin' perfect, comedy gold. It's so meta and so absurd with absurdity being the rule of law in this election cycle. Not since dogs playing poker have I seen such an iconic image of pop ridiculousness that can burn its way into your frontal lobe and never, ever leave.

And Stephen Colbert's face with his hand on his hip? That smirk like the one from The New Yorker cartoon cover -- priceless. And the Get Christie Love 'fro he's rocking? I couldn't love it more if I tried.

The cover goes with a very funny Entertainment Weekly Q&A with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert about the presidential race (as well as the occupational hazards of working as satirists). Stewart at one point compares their news-ish coverage to being akin to a drunk calling out another drunk for lying in a bar in New Jersey. The interview is hilarious.

Here's a nugget of Stewart answering a question about Gov. Sarah Palin's "folk hero" status:

I keep hearing that she's ''like us.'' There's this idea that people who hunt and have ''good'' values are somehow this mythological American; I don't know who ''this'' person is, I've never met them. She is no more typical ''us'' than I am, than Obama is, than McCain is, than Mr. T is. If there is something quintessentially or authentically American about her, I sort of feel like, you know what? You ''good values people'' have had the country for eight years, and done an unbelievably s---ty job. Let's find some bad values people and give them a shot, maybe they'll have a better take on it.

Thanks reader dkan71 for the link!

You Don't Dump David Letterman, Johnny Mac. David Letterman Dumps You!

Hmm. I don't think David Letterman appreciates being stood up, nor do I think he believes John McCain's sudden "urgency" theory about why he needed to suspend his campaign. Hmmm. Not good. You don't want to piss off the court jesters, Johnny Mac. They are brutal! And to dish on you in front of Bill O'Reilly's sworn enemy Keith Olbermann and to make the Olbermann giggle and invite him to partake in zingers? Consider my jaw unhinged. The boldness! The lack of shame!

Songs For Your Moms: Wayne Brady Goes R&B

Wayne Brady has always been a bit of a conundrum to me.

On one hand he is extremely talented and funny. On the other he can be cloying, annoying and corny. A lot of that has to do with the persona that works best for him on television, but he's obviously a gifted man with his ability to do improv and the hilarity that was his carjacking, pimping skit he did for Chappelle's Show a few years back. It demonstrated that Brady was self-aware and knew that the sight of him cursing and threatening prostitutes would be both jarring and ridiculously satirical. Next to "Black Bush" and "Rick James," it was one of my favorite skits.

That being said, Brady has just released an R&B album. He's a decent singer and dancer -- I'm shocked he hasn't been on Dancing With the Stars yet. White people love the shit out of him. He reminds me a bit of Johnny Gill, minus all sexual tension. Nice and neutered.

Music provided by Singersroom.com

The song he's released, "Ordinary," is very, very ordinary. It's a generic pop/R&B song with no creativity or modern touches. It sounds like something from the mid-90s that Brian McKnight would have passed on.

Brian McKnight isn't exactly Mr. Sex Appeal, but he knows how to pick and write a good love ballad and/or slow jam as the anti-R. Kelly.

Other songs have more promise, like the somewhat Motown influenced but modern "I Ain't Movin" and "You and Me," but they're still a little lacking in umph. (You can hear the samples on his Web site.)

I probably won't buy the album. (What am I saying with the "probably?" I totally won't buy this.) I like my music with either complexity and inventiveness or I want it to be the slickest and sickest of commercialized pop. "Ordinary" is neither. Senor Baby Wipes, actor Terrence Howard, recently released an album and while he clearly needs a singing coach to improving his breathing control, it's sonically interesting. I actually downloaded a few tracks. I'm not saying Brady needs to go all fey on an album with string arrangements, flutes and childrens' choruses, but I think he could have gone a lot slicker and sicker than this. Why waste such good pipes on the pedestrian? His album should be all over-produced power ballads and funky, uptempo dance numbers for your moms.

Not ordinary.