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Seeing Jimmie Walker really brings back many wonderful memories of my childhood, and that's why I believe that is important to keep track of our acting legends. In the case of Jimmie Walker, I think that somebody dropped the ball. He brought his character to life on all levels from hood player to carreer artist and he did while he juggled his family life assuming the role of big brother and father figure.
Hollywood was not good to him for some reason the roles were few and far between, he deserved much more because the brother could act. He was the hoods Chris Tucker, and he had Denzel Washingtons potential. I just wish that Hollywood takes the blinders off so that they dont miss other true talents.

Comments from Miss Phillips

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Jimmy Walker is still "Dynomite". He's right too. You don't know what you can say without offending someone. Your ticket stub should come with a disclaimer, "You may be offended by the words in this production". This warns you ahead of time to get the hell out if you can't take a joke. Imagine a world where we couldn't laugh at each other? I've said the "B-word" and a few "N-words", it doesn't bother me.

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I've always liked Jimmy Walker and thought he was an underrated comic talent that never got his due in the industry. He's now working in talk radio now, I believe, and its interesting to see his opinions on issues. On this matter, however, I think Walker is wrong. White comics can still say what they want to say in venues like comedy clubs or HBO. But what cannot be tolerated is the spewing of gratutious hate talk or racial slurs on the public airwaves. For of all, Imus isnt really a comedian. He's more of a radio talk show host and a commentator. He's held to a higher standard then a stand-up comic would be. Secondly and most importantly, Imus had a long and successful run with this type of 'humor'and he offended alot of people (particularly guests) who were unwilling to speak up because of what an appearance on his show could do for political careers, or the attention it could bring to the columns of journalists. Yet the fall of Imus was bound to happen - he was bound to step on a land mine with his style. And we he hurled that slur at the Rutger's basketball team, that was the mine that blew him to bits. It wasn't Jesse Jackson who brought Imus down, nor was it Al Sharpton. What did Imus in was the sight of that girls besketball team in the press conference, the poise and dignity they displayed. When the public saw the vast difference between what Imus called them and who they actually were, the insanity of his slur became almost palpably apparent and horrible. No decent person could understand why he'd say it after seeing those young ladies. Instead of being an apologist for Imus, or resentful that he lost his job as Walker seems to doing, (I've lost a job or two in my day, it isnt the end of the world, particularly for man of Imus's means), lets use this opportunity to acknowledge that the discourse in American society has become coarse, rude, mean-spirited and often profane. Lets use that happened to Imus as a catalyst to clean up how we talk to each other and end all the trash talk. And yes that includes a call to the rappers and black comics to stop using the n-word. Lets try to recapture a little civility again. We'll all be better off for it.

Lamont Palmer

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Since there were so few comments, I thought I'd post my poem, which accentuates my comments on the Jimmy Walker quote and the Imus flap.

*****


To Black Comics and Rappers: We're Tired of the N-Word


1.
When you use the n-word, whites think they can too.
You use it so freely. It is your drug, your nagging compulsion,
clinging like hair clings to skin.
It rolls from your tongue like racial spittle, this n-word.
You are an insensitive circus act juggling blinding epithets.
Do whites know it is a strange, backward endearment to us,
that, frankly, we should give up?
Do they care? Some thin distinction
of tissue consistency, some semantic nuisance,
wholey lost on rational minds?
Words change, impressions do not. Impressions are stones, meteors,
leaving pock marks on the inner mind.


2.
When you use the n-word, they think that is a license
for them; a pass, to facetiously utter its stinging sound.
Do you think you remove that sting by repeating it over and over,
like a dumb incantation? The sting is indelible, did you not know?
Your stage, your lights, your glitter, your make-up means nothing;
the N-word is still the N-word is still the N-word is still the N-word
is still the N-word is still the N-word--
I see ropes and trees and white hoods.
Repitition is no salve, no rhythmic balm.

In mixed company, I have to explain its use.
Social superhero. I hate wearing a red cape for you.
In chatrooms they repeat your n-word laced "jokes"
with a disclaimer--"well Dave Chappelle wrote it, not me."
Sometimes I say nothing till the sound of it goes away
like black smoke from a tenement fire, but the smoke is still smelled,
burnt, pungent. They smell it too. Fire-filled N-word. Word grenade
manufactured in our own dear South.


3.
We know the word, every American does.
We know it like the clouds. We know it like our uncles.
We know it like a perverse Grimm's tale.
It has been here since Old Glory,
since Martha and George. Lincoln used it, the Emancipator,
Jefferson used it, perhaps, even in bed
with sultry Miss Hemmings on tortured Virginia nights.
We need no introductions to it, no reminders of it.
Sane blacks would like to forget it, erase it from the world,
from minds, from the ears of the new ones coming along like daisies,
untouched. Don't let their ears learn the black death of it.




4.
This is not censorship, this is compassion.
The N-word on TV? Turn it off. It is HBO? Who cares?
Shut it up, shut it off.
History's crummy, bloody eyes still stare out from burned out churches,
and Jim Crow towns. This word smells like blood, garbage, and feces.
You with your jokes, find something else.
Or find work at Burger King, away from a revealing spotlight.
You with your raps, peruse a dictionary some time. Read, learn new shiny words.
All of you in the revealing spotlight with your N-word,
dig deeper, dig deeper, we've had enough
of your facile, shallow shock, like lightning from an inarticulate god.
Dig deeper, for we have had enough of the N-WORD.


Lamont Palmer
Poet/Writer

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cecil no2 made me think I got a mexican friend been knowing him 30 years and when things get a little boring and no one else is around I'll call him hey ni66a in country voice shocks him and then cracks him up I know he understands where I'm coming from.

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I agree w/ JJ. How in the world can we as a ppl. get so angry. When its all over the tv and radio video games used by our own ppl.over and over. I'm tired of excuses given by us like: We can say it but "they " better not. Get a clue 2007 WE ALL NEED TO BE DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY.

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NOT EVERYBODY USES THIS LANGUAGE. So you cannot use that "we as a people b.s" Some people actually have sense and self-respect.

As for Mr. Walker bemoaning the fact that White people can't go around offending everyone as one of their inaliable rights: I say it's about time!

Now the rest of you stop aping the slave master and learn self-control.

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