I grew up watching the show Good Times with Jimmy (JJ) Walker. As an adult, I’ve watched him go on Letterman many times (Letterman is an old friend of his, which is the only reason he brings him on TV) and try to be funny; the result is always that I feel embarrassed for him. It’s just painful to watch. So is this bizarre explanation for why he opposes marriage equality:
There’s just certain traditions that need to be upheld. I’ll give you the other side of it, no it doesn’t affect me, no it doesn’t change my life. There’s just traditions that need to be dealt with. I’m a believer that gay marriage should be passed because the battle is not worth the war. The gay lobby is very loud. I’m totally against it.
In 100 years from now, people are going to go, ‘Who was against gay marriage?’ And I’ll be one of those idiots and say, ‘That’s me.’ I’m just against it on moral grounds, that’s it. I’m as much a heathen as anybody. I just don’t believe on moral grounds it should be done. I don’t like it, I don’t accept it.
Good luck finding anything coherent in that mass of stupid. Of course, this is a guy who also says that Jay Leno is one of the ten funniest comedians working today. Jay Leno hasn’t been funny since Walker, who has never been funny, was relevant.
24 comments
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rmsc
July 21, 2012 at 11:14 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If I say, DY-NO-MITE!, you don’t think its funny? Strange
Jasper of Maine (I feel safe and welcome at FTB)
July 21, 2012 at 11:16 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m a firm believer that morality should be grounded in reality, otherwise it’s “fantasy morality”. So why is it immoral? Let me guess, because an old book says so.
Gretchen
July 21, 2012 at 11:37 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, is it tradition, or is it moral grounds? Make up your mind; they’re not the same thing.
Every time there’s an advance in civil rights, a tradition goes by the wayside– a tradition of denying those rights. Using the word normatively simply means you want to apply words like “time-honored” and “values” to a practice of mistreating a certain segment of society over an extended period of time as an argument for continuing to do so. In other words, you’re intellectually lazy and can’t be bothered to lift a neuron for half a second to consider whether the practice ought to be continued or not.
Intellectually lazy people should not vote. I can’t advocate that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote, but it’s wrong for them to inflict that kind of mental and moral inertia on the rest of us who are actually trying to improve things around here.
Yeah, I know…it’s called conservatism. But conservatism can also refer to some things I actually respect, and I have nothing but scorn for this particular view of the world.
Gretchen
July 21, 2012 at 11:40 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
At least Walker has the presence of mind to know full well that people are going to consider him an idiot for opposing gay rights, and might even consider himself one currently, though he apparently values his idiotic traditions and/or “morals” more than non-idiocy.
Rando
July 21, 2012 at 12:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
There’s just certain traditions that need to be upheld. I’ll give you the other side of it, no it doesn’t affect me, no it doesn’t change my life. There’s just traditions that need to be dealt with. I’m a believer that slavery should be passed because the battle is not worth the war. The Anti Slavery lobby is very loud. I’m totally against it.
In 100 years from now, people are going to go, ‘Who was against freeing the slaves?’ And I’ll be one of those idiots and say, ‘That’s me.’ I’m just against it on moral grounds, that’s it. I’m as much a heathen as anybody. I just don’t believe on moral grounds it should be done. I don’t like it, I don’t accept it.
I even changed it to reflect another “tradition” in America.
Nope, still sounds like crap.
falstaff
July 21, 2012 at 12:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
JJ is still alive?
democommie
July 21, 2012 at 1:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“JJ is still alive?”
From the Amygdala down.
I never watched any of those sitcoms for more than a few minutes as they basically pandered to whites who wanted to watch the darkies gettin’ their TASTE of the life. Diff’rent Strokes, The Jeffersons, what have you, all of them were crap. Now, Robert Guillame’s character, Benson, in “Soap”, he was worth watching. Sidney Poitier was another actor who was always worth watching (and he was in a couple of REALLY shitty movies, back then.
JJ Walker isn’t worth the time, never was.
dingojack
July 21, 2012 at 2:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yep a weapons grade moron, but an honest weapons grade moron.
And why would that be?
“…I’m as much a heathen as anybody,,,”
OK I see where the dishonesty got squeezed out.
Dingo
—-
PS I loved Good Times. I was the first time I saw honest, working poor, urban American blacks on TV. In my whitebread suburb I didn’t even know it was a possibility. Quite an innovation for it’s time (but it sure hasn’t aged well).
dan4
July 21, 2012 at 2:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Weapons Grade Moron”
Really? I disagree with him on his opposition to SSM…but he stated it in such a low-key way that he certainly didn’t deserve this level of vitriol.
christophburschka
July 21, 2012 at 2:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So he expects to live to, what, 165?
I wasn’t aware that stupidity confers immortality.
nobody
July 21, 2012 at 3:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I thought he was extremely respectable about it, and he even said it should be allowed because it doesn’t affect him, even though he doesn’t agree with it, and he admits that in a hundred years it’ll just be common and anyone now who opposes it will look like idiots. He has a very high self-awareness, which is admirable. He doesn’t like it, and he doesn’t have to.
brocasbrian
July 21, 2012 at 3:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ve had a similar response to Mos Def. He’s a talented actor but after seeing him on Bill Maher a few times he’s riddled with crazy conspiracy theories. He was going off about how 911 was an inside job and about how we never went to the moon among others.
Tony the Parkour Kat [safe and welcome at FtB]
July 21, 2012 at 4:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Walker expressed an opinion that was poorly thought out and failed to adequately explain himself. That he did so in a civil manner takes nothing away from the moronic nature of his statements. As one commenter did upthread just sub the tradition of slavery with the tradition of heterosexual marriage and you see that his brain was running on Deeply Dumb.
Ouabache
July 21, 2012 at 4:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It sounds a lot like he’s fighting against himself here. Let me try to sort it out:
And then we have this:
Makes a bit more sense but now you have no idea where he stands on the issue.
fifthdentist
July 21, 2012 at 4:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“I wasn’t aware that stupidity confers immortality.”
There’s a certain old book in which characters lived anywhere from 100-plus to 800, IIRC. Noah was about 600 when he decided to build a giant boat in the middle of a desert. Later readers of the same book invented the belief that they were immortal.
koliedrus
July 21, 2012 at 6:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In order for me to teach myself how to be a decent human being, I have to take concepts that confuse me and apply a perspective that I understand.
In this case, I made Jimmy a white male, circa 1957 and changed the focus a bit.
I wonder if Jimmy knows about Strom Thurmond.
Via that mental exercise, I now have an opinion.
I agree with the title of this post.
imthegenieicandoanything
July 21, 2012 at 6:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Aged comedians are generally like irradiated fruit: they might still look OK, but they’re usually rotten inside.
A lot of comedy is based on rage against the unfairness of life, but eventually it fossilizes into simple rage at random targets, with the comedian still under the delusion he/she is cutting to the core of truth. Think of poor, poor, Bill Cosby.
Niki M
July 21, 2012 at 6:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Damnit, I’ve been taking to watching the show on syndication lately (mostly because mini-Janet Jackson never fails to be adorable)…now I have to reconsider.
You used to be damned cool, JJ. Damned cool.
F
July 21, 2012 at 8:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Lolwut? Vitriol? It’s a description. It isn’t his position which is moronic here (which it is, but that isn’t the point), he doesn’t make any sense when stating his position and reasons for it. Acknowledges to a certain extent that he’s wrong, but makes contradictory statements and does nothing, even badly, to reconcile them. Moronic.
Yet still refuses to make any sense. Which isn’t worthy of any amount of respect at all.
Yeah. Exactly. You can support a right thing, like gay marriage, and still be a moron, if you want to give “reasons” for your position that make no sense and are fallacious on several levels or points while contradicting yourself. (Talk to some cultural/bandwagon/hipster environmentalists – you know, the sort that conservatives enjoy stereotyping all environmentalists as for their convenience.) Walker just happens to be stupid about the root issue as well.
M. A. Melby
July 21, 2012 at 11:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It doesn’t make any sense – at all. What he said was really really stupid.
However, it’s just difficult to not react badly to him being called a “moron”. It’s probably because I really loved the show. Of course, he was playing a character – but my gut doesn’t know that however many times my head mentions it.
He also isn’t being particularly offensive – well, compared to others let’s say. It would actually be sort of interesting to have a conversation with him about it – and try to figure out what’s going on in his head.
Reading that passage was like looking into the heart of cognitive dissonance.
democommie
July 22, 2012 at 12:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Of course, he was playing a character – but my gut doesn’t know that however many times my head mentions it.”
Darryl Hannah is an actress who plays dummies–she is anything but stupid.
Kurt Russell generally plays the eternal teen-ager–it’s schtick.
Someone asked Dennis Leary’s wife what it was like to be married to such a crazy guy. Her reply was that he’s an ACTOR who plays a crazy guy (including his stand-up routine) and that he does normal whiteguy shit at home.
JJ Walker is like Richard Simmons, Chuck Norris, Victoria Jackson, Steven Segal and a fuckton of other “actors” out there. They’re all essentially one trick ponies and the gag stopped working a long time ago.
antaresrichard
July 22, 2012 at 5:04 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I am reminded of the discussion of ‘Good Times’ in Marlon Riggs’ 1992 documentary ‘Color Adjustment’.
Excerpted from the transcript:
HENRY (LOUIS) GATES: GOOD TIMES represented the greatest potential and also in my opinion the greatest failure. It had the greatest potential because it was an inner city family that was nuclear …that was solid!
…
HENRY GATES: They would talk about real world issues, and how an actual black family deals with those real world issues of racism and economic discrimination. But what happened?
[GOOD TIMES]
JJ: “DYNOMITE!”
HENRY GATES: They elevated J.J.’s role, which had been one
of amusing and sometimes sophisticated comedy, to that of a
buffoon!
NORMAN LEAR: The audience just loved it! But we erred by
giving them too much, by not stopping sooner and giving and
finding something else, to fill the, you know, what J.J. had
to do to amuse an audience.
(PATRICIA A.) TURNER: It was very easy for the producers of GOOD
TIMES to fall back on the familiar way of making people
laugh about blacks! Familiar way of giving them language
that’s too sophisticated, clothes that are ill-fitting, and
a value system that puts pleasure at the top!
Nathaniel Frein
July 22, 2012 at 1:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
He’s self-aware enough to know that this isn’t the “right side” to be on.
What bothers me is the reason he’s giving for saying that “gay marriage should pass” (which I’m interpreting — possibly optimistically? — to mean that he isn’t going to vote against it given the opportunity). He says that the “gay lobby is loud”. It sounds like he’s treating the gay lobby as a child throwing a temper tantrum and giving it a toy to shut it up.
And even with his disclaimers that he’s going to stand aside and let gay marriage happen, he’s still providing more quotes for mining by people who are actively opposing it. If he really feels that we should go ahead and let gay marriage go though, even though he feels it’s against morals or tradition or whatever, it seems to me that the culturally aware thing to do would be to bite his tongue…
bmiller
July 23, 2012 at 4:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Not all aged comedians are bad. R.I.P. George Carlin, whose late period rants are epic. :)