"I ain't dead yet, muthafucka"

Maybe I'll write something longer, maybe I won't, but I just wanted to put this out there, in case you haven't heard.

Richard Pryor has died

So many comedians of his generation skirted any kind of social responsibility, or any kind of controversy (Lenny Bruce excepted of course). Pryor reveled in controversy, swam in it, and spit it out at his audiences. And we loved it. I've laughed so hard listening to Richard Pryor that I sobbed. My dad and I would have to pull off the road if we put in one of his tapes while driving, to keep from crashing. When they started giving out Grammys for comedy/spoken word records in the 70s, Pryor's albums dominated that category for nearly a decade.

There have been many since who have taken up his yoke and tried to speak laughter to power (Bill Hicks being my favorite, but also David Cross, and Dave Chappelle, to name a few of the righteous), but Richard Pryor proved that you could interrogate inequality with laughter--a fairly revolutionary proposition, given the long history of sober scholarship on the ills of the world, and something all of us seeking to change the status quo should constantly keep in mind.