The Twitterverse has some questions about a resurfaced video in which Louis C.K. and Chris Rock casually drop the N-word.
A scene from HBO’s 2011 unscripted comedy talk show “Talking Funny” has recently caught the attention of people online. The clip in question features C.K. and Rock having a conversation with fellow comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Ricky Gervais.
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Rock told Seinfeld and Gervais how C.K. is “the blackest white guy I know.” C.K. responded by asking Rock, “you’re saying I’m a n****r?”
“Yes,” Rock replied. “You are the n****r-est white man I have ever [met].” Gervais was thoroughly amused by the whole conversation, but Seinfeld was visibly uncomfortable. “We say n****ger on stage,” C.K. explained, pointing at Rock and himself. “You guys don’t.”
“Who says n****ger onstage? We don’t,” Gervais said of himself and Seinfeld. “You just did,” Seinfeld obviously pointed out. “You’ve found the humour of it,” Seinfeld told C.K. “I haven’t, nor do I seek it.”
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Marketing consultant Frederick Joseph was appalled by the conversation he witnessed. “So Chris Rock just said Louis C.K. is a white “n****r” he and Ricky Gervais not only agreed but preceded to say n****r about five times,” Joseph tweeted on Saturday. “Jerry Seinfeld is the only one who had an issue. Chris Rock, you should be ashamed, all that fame and you’re still shucking and jiving?”
TMZ caught up with Wayne Brady, and the “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” star offered his own scathing opinion about the comedians’ language — and Seinfeld’s role in the discussion.
“Seinfeld stayed out of it, but that doesn’t make him a hero or a saint — it just makes him tactically smart,” Brady told TMZ while he was interviewed at LAX.
“It was inappropriate,” he added. “Louis CK shouldn’t have been saying it, Chris Rock shouldn’t have signed off on it, Ricky Gervais sure as hell shouldn’t have said it — and I’m a big Ricky Gervais fan.”
In fact, Brady offers advice for any comedians pondering using that word in a comedy routine.
“Just don’t. I don’t care if your best friend is the blackest person in the world, just don’t,” he explains. “That word has so much history connected to it, just err on the side of class: Don’t say it.”
