Jackie Mason, 84, Can Still Cause Controversy: Says There’s No Free Speech in America For White People
Jackie Mason is a legend in the business of comedy, he’s one of the few living comedians who dominated the Borscht Belt in America. The 84 year old comic doesn’t perform a lot these days, and doesn’t give interviews often, but he had a lot to say this week after hearing about Jerry Seinfeld’s statement that America is too PC. He had some very politically in-correct (or un-politically correct?) things to say.
In a phone interview with Aaron Klein Investigative Radio that hasn’t aired yet but was excerpted at The Hollywood Reporter, Mason told Klein, “There is only free speech now in this country for black people and homosexuals and any other minority … But if you are a white Protestant American gentile you can’t say a word.”
In the clip, the 84 year old comedian talked about the changing terminology over the decades when it comes to race. “It used to be you couldn’t say the N-word,” he says. “Then the word ‘black’ went out of business because you had to say ‘Negro.’ Then ‘Negro’ went out of business, you had to say ‘African American.’ Now, everyday, you have to buy a paper to find out what a black person is called today … A black person can call you anything he wants. Free speech today is only for black people.”
Homosexuals can attack you and abuse you. And people who are in favor of same-sex marriage could abuse you, but you can’t say a word against same-sex marriage,
“The homosexuals are now in charge, and if they found out you’re a heterosexual, you’re afraid to walk in the street,” he quipped. “Walk down the street now with a girl and everybody wonders what’s wrong with you.”
Jackie can’t quite figure out why Seinfeld would worry about how people react to what he says. With a billion dollars in his pocket, Mason said, “he’s got to be nuts to wonder or worry about what people are going to think,” Mason said.
It’s difficult to tell if he’s making jokes, or laying down his real opinions, but Mason is no stranger to controversy in race or other areas. In 1991 Mason got into some trouble with the NAACP for calling David Dinkins a “fancy schwartz with a moustache,” and he got into more heat in 2009 for using the term schvartze referring to President Obama. And an alleged incident on the Ed Sullivan show back in 1964 changed the course of his career when it was said that he gave the middle finger to Ed Sullivan (although Mason later won a libel suit concerning the incident).
Mason has been voted among the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians, and ranked #63 in Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time.
The interview will air in its entirety on New York’s AM970 The Answer this Sunday.
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