*When Bill Cosby’s publicist slammed Eddie Murphy’s “Saturday Night Live” joke about the disgraced comedian, calling him a “Hollywood Slave,” it sparked debate across social media about Black men publicly criticizing other Black men.
“If you would have told me 30 years ago that I would be this boring, stay-at-home house dad and Bill Cosby would be in jail, even I would have took that bet,” Murphy said during his SNL opening monologue.
Cosby, who is serving 3-to-10 years in prison for aggravated indecent assault, had his trusted handler Andre Wyatt respond to Murphy’s “joke” in a statement on Instgram.
“It is sad that Mr. Murphy would take this glorious moment of returning to SNL and make disparaging remarks against Mr. Cosby,” read the statement in part. “One would think that Mr. Murphy was given his freedom to leave the plantation, so that he could make his own decisions; but he decided to sell himself back to being a Hollywood Slave. Stepin Fetchit plus cooning equals the destruction of Black Men in Hollywood.”
The “slave” remark sent Twitter into a frenzy.
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In Eddie Murphy’s stand-up specials, he’d say everything he couldn’t say on network TV, plus a few things that would make the internet explode if he said them today
But Murphy says he has “No regrets.” https://t.co/QrI31WcVKV pic.twitter.com/wPT15lKq3H
— CBS Sunday Morning ? (@CBSSunday) December 30, 2019
As reported by nbc.com, Bob Sumner, the co-founder of Def Comedy Jam, told NBCBLK: “The ‘slave’ comment was ridiculous. Have a Coke and a smile.”
Comedian D.L. Hughley also tweeted: “Ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun. Have a Coke and a smile….”
Murphy and Cosby have had a three-decade long feud and fans believe the public beefing between Black men is troubling.
“I don’t think ‘fair or unfair’ fits this synecdoche,” said Sam Myers, a director of a social service agency near Philadelphia, where Cosby is from. “The question is: Was the joke necessary or unnecessary? (Murphy) could have done his bit without disparaging Bill Cosby and gotten his point across as well. … For me, it’s another case of kicking a man when he’s down, in particular kicking this black man who paved the way for him to have success.
“At the same time, (Cosby’s publicist) took it to another level that also wasn’t necessary. It looks like black people pulling one another down and who do not know how to adequately enjoy prosperity.”
Murphy previously expressed his issues with Cosby in the 1987 standup film, “Raw.”
“I’m a big fan of Bill Cosby,” Murphy said in the special. “Never met the man, but he called me up about a year ago and chastised me on the phone about being too dirty on the stage. It was real weird because I had never met him and he just thought he should call me up, because he was Bill, and tell me that that isn’t what comedy is all about. I sat and listened to this man chastise me, and when Bill Cosby chastises you, you forget you’re grown, you feel like one of the Cosby kids.”
Murphy also shared on Netflix’ Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee with Jerry Seinfeld: “[Cosby] had a weird thing with me that he didn’t have with other comics. It was mean. He wasn’t nice. He wasn’t doing that with everybody, he was doing that with me specifically. He was s—y with me.”
In his IG statement, Wyatt suggested Murphy and Cosby meet and use their “collective platforms” for good, rather than spew negativity.
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