On Sunday, Vulture.com released an interview between leftist media sycophant Frank Rich and comedian Chris Rock. The interview covered Ferguson, media, President Obama, and Bill Cosby, among other topics.
According to Rock, Republicans won in 2014 because they “have no problem playing the victims.” He continued by stating that America “wants monopolies” and a “class system…Maybe they just want a Bush. Maybe they want no regulations. It’s hard for me to figure out people voting against their own self-interests.”
Says the black man earning millions of dollars and then voting for a party that declares that America is a racist, classist country, and inordinately taxing those who earn large amounts of money.
But Rock continues by complaining about class distinctions in America;
Oh, people don’t even know. If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets. If the average person could see the Virgin Airlines first-class lounge, they’d go, ‘What? What? This is food, and it’s free, and they…what? Massage? Are you kidding me?
Actually, there is no one class of hereditary wealthy in the United States. As economists have pointed out, Americans move in and out of the “rich” category quite frequently. Thomas Sowell explains: “Recent data from the Internal Revenue Service show that more than half the people who were in the top one percent in 1996 were no longer there in 2005. Among the top one-hundredth of one percent, three-quarters of them were no longer there at the end of the decade.”
But if Rock wants to give up his wealth and go back to working nightclubs for chump change, he’s welcome to it. Nobody’s stopping him.
The irony of the former New York Times theater critic talking with the multimillionaire Rock about class imbalances is – no pun intended – rich. But when it comes to college campuses, Rock suddenly turns on his common sense switch:
I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they’re way too conservative. Not in their political views–not like they’re voting Republican–but in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody. Kids raised on a culture of “We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.” Or just ignoring race to a fault. You can’t say “the black kid over there.” No, it’s “the guy with the red shoes.” You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.
Rock criticizes those who tape comedy performances, stating that they are undermining the process, and that bad comics will be weeded out by the market anyway:
An audience that’s not laughing is the biggest indictment that something’s too far. No comedian’s ever done a joke that bombs all the time and kept doing it. Nobody in the history of stand-up. Not one guy.
The same leftism that promotes Chris Rock – and that Chris Rock promotes – has returned to bite him on the ass. Tragic.
Rock did comment on the rape allegations surrounding Bill Cosby, stating, “I hope it’s not true. That’s all you can say. I really do.” Then he pivoted to other comics, stating that Dennis Miller was not funny because he is too conservative; he said that Jon Stewart was funny because he was “middle-to-left, but he’s still more in the middle.” Rich and Rock agreed that Miller – who routinely criticizes President Obama – was somehow an emissary of the powerful, while Stewart, who allies himself with the Obama administration and its media flunkies, speaks truth to that power.
Speaking of Obama, Rock had nothing but praise for the president, whom he once said was “our boss” and the “dad of the country.” Obama, Rock now says, is “kind of cool.” He continued by stating that Obama has shaped culture:
In a weird way, him saying he listens to Jay Z–it’s kind of revolutionary, because he’s of the age that he’s supposed to listen to that stuff. And so he’s a little more himself than most politicians. We’ll see if more politicians end up being just themselves.
There has never been a president more highly-produced than Obama. Yet for his Hollywood acolytes, he is pure originality. And for Rock, Obama’s a Hall of Famer, even if he’s mildly disappointing:
I’m trying to figure out the right analogy. Everybody wanted Michael Jordan, right? We got Shaq. That’s not a disappointment. You know what I mean? We got Charles Barkley. It’s still a Hall of Fame career.
Rock has spent so much time in the leftist bubble that he actually believes Obama represents the middle of the country, unlike that dastardly Bush fellow:
[T]he thing about George Bush is that the kid revolutionized the presidency. How? He was the first president who only served the people who voted for him. He literally operated like a cable network. You know what I mean?… He’s the first cable-television president, and the thing liberals don’t like about Obama is that he’s a network guy. He’s kind of Les Moonves. He’s trying to get everybody. And I think he’s figured out, and maybe a little late, that there’s some people he’s never going to get.
Yes, Chris. Clearly, President Obama’s desire to reach out to the other side has been his undoing, given his bipartisan Obamacare push, his bipartisan immigration executive action, and his bipartisan climate change rhetoric. If only he’d been more divisive.
In Rock’s opinion, Obama should have been more divisive: he should have “let it all just drop.” Rock continued:
Just let the country flatline. Let the auto industry die. Don’t bail anybody out. In sports, that’s what any new GM does….Let it all go to hell knowing good and well this is on them. That way you can implement….Maybe Obama should have let the plane crash. You get credit for bringing somebody back from the dead. You don’t really get credit for helping a sick person by administering antibiotics.
Rich called this analysis “clever.” Yet it is conservatives who want America to fail, folks.
Rock went on to talk about how Obama has decreased racism among young people – an asinine notion, given that racism never took root among young Americans. But Rock says he still grills his daughters about racism because they go to a mostly-white private school (so much for his man of the downtrodden shtick):
I mean, I almost cry every day. I drop my kids off and watch them in the school with all these mostly white kids, and I got to tell you, I drill them every day: Did anything happen today? Did anybody say anything? They look at me like I am crazy.
Rock continues, “My children are going to be the first black children in the history of America to actually have the benefit of the doubt of just being moral, intelligent people.” Right. America just elected – twice – a black man. And only now Americans are beginning to treat black children well?
Rich then questioned Rock about Sarah Palin, the most evil of all humans: “We still have some white people taking the Sarah Palin line about blacks and immigrants alike. They want to “take back the country”–and we know from whom. I find it depressing. The increments of change seem to be so much tinier than we wanted to believe when the Civil Rights Act passed 50 years ago, or when Obama was elected in 2008.” It was left to Rock to calm the very white, very privileged Rich off the ledge:
Yeah. The stuff you’re talking about is pockets though. There’s always going to be people that don’t know that the war’s over. I’m more optimistic than you, but maybe it’s because I live the way I do. I just have a great life, so it’s easier for me to say things are great. But not even me. My brothers drive trucks and stock shelves. They live in a much better world than my father did.
The talk got wilder. Rock called Ellen Degeneres the “gay Rosa Parks” – not a great analogy, given that Ellen had her own sitcom on network television before coming out, whereas Rosa Parks was not allowed by law to sit in the front of a bus. Rock said that football owners were an evil club, and that the term owner is “so nasty and disgusting” – again, not a great observation, given the fact that owners, you know, own the team. Rich, for his part, agreed, saying the word had an “antebellum ring.” Because stupid.
Rock talked about his work on drama: “The script I’m working on…it’s based on a civil-rights icon. A radio guy with a talk show. Kind of an Al Sharpton guy who’s against Obama in the year Obama runs.” Terrific. Jon Stewart will love it, no doubt.
Finally, Rock said he’d like to be a journalist: “I would love to be a 60 Minutes correspondent. I would cover anything. I mean, I’d be in Ferguson right now, and it would be in-depth, and it would be funny.” How would he make Ferguson funny? By focusing on white people, who are the big problem in American society:
When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before…. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.
Rock said white Americans must start “owning their actions. Not even their actions. The actions of your dad. Yeah, it’s unfair that you can get judged by something you didn’t do, but it’s also unfair that you can inherit money that you didn’t work for.” Black people, however, inherit their parents’ victimhood. That means that no matter the situation, only white people can be in the wrong. Hence Rock’s obsession with Ferguson, despite the facts.
Rock did have some harsh words for the Clintons. After ripping on Chris Christie and Bridgegate (“You just want to choke somebody,” he said, ignoring the shutdown of the Lincoln Tunnel last week by Ferguson protesters), Rock said that Clinton was a “dick” to Obama, and was only the first black president “until a black guy showed up.”
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the new book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
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