Bernie Mac's riff too crass for Obama
Comedian Bernie Mac got a little too cute when he warmed up the crowd at a Barack Obama fund-raiser in Chicago Friday night.
Obama's campaign staff attached this preface to the "pool report" filed by the Los Angeles Times reporter allowed to cover the fund-raiser: "Senator Obama told Bernie Mac that he doesn't condone these statements and believes what was said was inappropriate."
(AP)
What was so risqué?
Apparently the word "ho."
"I don't know why my man Barack wants to be president but I'm proud of him because politics is dirty, especially with Republicans," Mac told the crowd of 600 at the Hyatt.
"So Barack, you can't get mad, you understand, when you hear rumors. People like rumors. They are going to say things like, you know, you was in the club with Lil' Kim and you and Kanye West got in a fist fight."
Mac cussed plenty through the act and said that would disqualify him from being vice-president.
"Having a black first lady is different: You're still going have to do the dishes and the laundry and all that . . . you got to pick up the kids," Mac said. "'You didn't pick up the kids?' 'I just came from Korea, talking about nuclear weapons.' 'You were on Air Force One and you couldn't stop to pick up the kids?'"
Mac said he is a Democrat "born and raised" but added that, "I'm a Republican at tax time." He mimicked a mock warning from an imagined staffer: "Don't kill the message."
Mac ended his irreverent riff with a joke involving the women in the families and living with two "hos."
A heckler started protesting, asking for Mac to step down to let Obama come on.
When Obama did, the presidential hopeful thanked, among others, "my great friend, one of the kings of comedy, Bernie Mac."
Obama ended his speech by saying, "We can't afford to be divided by religion, or by region or class. Or by gender."
Then, pausing for effect, he added: "That means, by the way, Bernie, you got to clean up your act. This is a family affair. . . . I'm just messing with you, man."
After the $2,300-a-head Hyatt fundraiser, Obama hit a $500-a-ticket Jeff Tweedy concert fundraiser in his honor at the Park West.
"Before these guys go, I want them to know that I had heard a rumor that they had suggested that I had nothing by them on my iPod," Obama said at the show. "That is not true. I love Wilco."
Contributing: Erica Green