Jimmie Walker Takes On the PC Police

[Zoneboy]

Link

Originality is in short supply in Hollywood. According to Deadline, a movie version of the ’70s sitcom “Good Times” is in the works.

Don’t expect to see Jimmie Walker, who starred as J.J. Evans aka “Kid Dy-no-mite” during the run of the hit show, in the forthcoming flick.

“I’ve heard about the movie but I’m not involved,” Walker says in a call from St. Louis. “It’s got as much to do with me as I have to do with being the New York Mets center fielder. I talked to Barry Williams (of “Brady Bunch” fame). He’s a friend. The same thing happened to him when the “Brady Bunch” movies happened. He said not to even think about it. I got other things to think about.”

Walker, 65, who will perform Saturday at Goodnights, is thinking topical. That’s what his stand-up is all about.

“One thing I’ve been talking about is the PC police and how crazy things are,” Walker says. “How about President Obama getting heat for calling California’s attorney general (Kamala Harris) pretty? Who cares? The PC police are crazy. It’s like when Brent Musberger went on and on about how beautiful Catherine Webb is during the championship game with Alabama in January. It’s amazing that you can’t even call someone beautiful without getting into trouble.”

Walker will talk about anything – politics, sports, racism. “Why not go all out?” he says. “I talk about things nobody else talks about. Like how come when we watch a boxing match these days, the commentator can’t say the black guy is beating up the white guy? We have to say, ‘the guy in the red trunks is pummeling the guy in the black trunks.’ It’s a crazy world. We’re really going down as a society.”

Three months before he passed away, iconic comic George Carlin said during an interview that America was circling the drain. Walker concurs.

“I think George was right on the money,” Walker says. “It’s getting uncomfortable and it’s going to get worse as a society. In a few years, you’ll have insurance companies pulling the plug on the elderly. ‘He lived until he was 85, that’s enough. Let him die.’”

And then there is television, which enabled Walker to emerge from a hardscrabble life in the Bronx to the cover of Time magazine and become one of the most popular figures in America.

The world of sitcoms is very different today than it was when Norman Lear was creating shows that were ahead of their time, such as “All In The Family,” “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” and “Good Times.”

“Norman was a true maverick,” Walker says. “It goes back to the PC police again, but the reason television was so good then was because you could take chances and say certain things. You could never have “Sanford And Son” today. It’s a different world. I would hate to be 16 right now. You go to college, come out with incredible debt and there’s no jobs.”

Still, Walker is busier than ever. He is touring the country as a stand-up. He hosts sports talk radio and he is an author. He wrote his autobiography “Dyn-O-Mite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times,” which was released in 2012.

Walker could retire and rest on his laurels. Aside from “Good Times,” he toured as the opening act for Bob Marley and Miles Davis. He was the official stand-up comic for The Black Panther Party.

Walker’s book is compelling, provocative and humorous. “I think after all of these years in the business, I have a story to tell,” he says.

“I told it. I’ve been around. I’ve seen it all and I like to talk about it. I’m busy. I don’t have to be in the ‘Good Times’ movie. I’m doing fine.

[Mr. Drucker]

"Politically Correct" is merely euphemism for big bitchy pain in the........

[Neutronman67]

I agree

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LSljsbpJ58

[catlover79]

Great article - thanks for sharing it. I recommend his book, too. It is a fascinating read about not only his stint on Good Times, but his life in stand-up comedy and what he witnessed first-hand in the Late Night War in 1992 (Leno vs. Letterman).