“How You Gonna Make Decisions About the Future When You Ain’t Gonna Be Here?”
The new Chris Rock special “Kill the Messenger” premiered this weekend, and the timing couldn’t be better. While it was somewhat weird for me that producers spliced clips together from three different shows — New York, London and Johannesburg — and the transitions were far from seamless, this special was vintage Chris Rock. It’s good to see he’s still got it, and that after a string of pitiful HBO comedy specials recently (Dana Carvey excluded), we are reminded that these specials still have the capacity to be great.
As Rock normally barks after he says something particularly controversial, he didn’t use his “That’s right I said it!” line after his most shocking line — about how John McCain was captured in Vietnam. It’s interesting how McCain’s military service is really the last and only untouchable issue in this election. And Rock touched it. Here’s what he said in his special:
McCain has got that old story. Motherfucker’s been telling the same story for 40 fucking years. He a war hero. He a war hero. He a war hero… THAT GOT CAPTURED. There’s a lot of guys in jail that got captured. Shit…Fuck that. I don’t want to vote for nobody that got captured, I want to vote for the motherfucker that got away.
From Joy Behar’s questioning of McCain on “The View,” widely considered his toughest interview to date; to Tina Fey’s nearly perfect impersonation of Sarah Palin on “SNL”; to David Letterman’s exposing how McCain lied about having to cancel his “Late Show” appearance; to Chris Rock’s new special, comedians are playing an enormous role in this election. They are asking the questions and saying the things the mainstream media won’t. What news anchor would have the nerve to say that McCain hired his nurse as his running mate? Here’s a good clip from “Kill the Messenger”: