Eddie Griffin Mic Cut at Black Enterprise Event
5 Sep
An unofficial War on Colored Foolishness has been waged by Black folks who know we can do better. The latest victim, minstrel comedian Eddie Griffin. Richard Prince reports from his column Journal-isms.
Earl Graves, founder of Black Enterprise magazine, is an old-school kind of guy, and so were most of the 1,200 in the audience for the 14th Annual Black Enterprise/Pepsi Golf & Tennis Challenge.
So when comedian Eddie Griffin started tossing around the “N” word and the one abbreviated “MF,” and then brought white women into his repertoire, he suddenly found his hand-held microphone go dead. Griffin tried a floor mic, but that one was dead, too.
Griffin then turned to the audience, whose members hadn’t been laughing at the jokes but were uncertain what was happening when the mics were turned off. He said, “f— it, I don’t need no mic,” and finished his joke. Then he left, with Morris Day and The Time not quite ready to go on next.
After sending someone to the stage to fill the time, Graves, 72, took the mic and explained, “the man’s going to get paid, but we can’t tolerate this,” in the words of a witness who described the scene to Journal-isms.
Good for Earl Graves. I don’t know why the hell you’d book Eddie Griffin for a bourgie affair like that anyhow and not expect a mess, but oh well. Didn’t they know who he was before they booked him? I do think its interesting that, according to Prince, that it took a joke about white women for the plug to be pulled. What does that say about “Black” Enterprise?
But it looks like Black folks have had it with this type of mess. Developing…
I’m hoping that the delay until the “white women” portion of the idiot’s routine was caused solely by the time it took to reach the rather drastic step of shutting off the mic.
In any case, a Damn good start!
I dont think it was about the white women per say but the n wod used time and time again…eve if I feel that many of them folks there dont identify with the rest pf s po black folks…who knows maybe some of the brought their white women with um. eddie is eddie- you gotta respect him for that!