JESSE JACKSON GOES OFF THE DEEP END

There’s this movie out now called "Barbershop". It’s a comedy about a bunch of guys hanging around a barbershop in a largely black neighborhood and shooting the breeze. It stars former rapper Ice Cube and the wonderfully named Cedric the Entertainer.

Now, normally, this would be about a Level Three ("Wait for HBO") movie for me. But the recent controversy surrounding one scene in the film has moved it up to at least a Level Two ("Wait for Video"), and if it keeps up, it may go to a One ("I’ve got to see this right now") Level Four, if you’re interested, is "wait for it to be on late night when there’s absolutely nothing else on but I don’t feel like going to bed and the Internet connection is down again."

Anyway, Cedric (or, if you want to be more formal, "Mr. Entertainer") plays a character named Eddie, who, it seems, is one of those folks who likes to say outrageous things just to stir things up. "It’s a barbershop," Eddie asserts. "You can say anything in the barbershop." Eddie proves it when he goes off on a rant about how a lot of black folks in the segregated south of the early 60’s refused to give up their bus seats to white people, but Rosa Parks just got publicity because she was connected with the NAACP. He then goes on to make jokes about alleged promiscuity on the part of Dr. Martin Luther King. When one of the other characters jokingly warns him "don’t let Jesse Jackson hear you talk like that," Eddie responds with…okay, I can’t quote him verbatim in a family newspaper. Let’s just say he invites that person to perform an act with the Reverend Jackson that normally would only be performed with Mrs. Jackson or the occasional female Rainbow Coalition staffer. The other barbers and customers, of course, immediately jump all over Eddie for the statements.

Now, admittedly, if someone had said something like that about me in a movie, I might be a little steamed, but there wouldn’t be squat-all I could do about it. Jackson, however, as the self-anointed "spokesman for black America", can pick up the phone and within twenty-four hours be on every media outlet in the country. Which is exactly what Jesse did. He put aside issues like poverty, street violence and drugs, to go on a crusade against an independently produced film. He let it be known that he had spoken with the King family and the Parks family and that they were all "highly insulted." Jackson even told USA Today that, "the filmmakers crossed the line between what's sacred and serious and what's funny." Now let’s look at that again. The man actually used the words "sacred and serious" to describe, among other things, himself.

The producers of the film, George Tillman Jr. and Bob Teitel (both African-Americans, by the way) immediately began apologizing profusely. "I completely did not mean to offend anyone," Tillman said. This puts him in the running for the Big Wuss Hall of Fame, in my opinion. But maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe they were afraid they’d get sued for reparations or something.

The apologies, however, were not enough for the Rev. (They never are, of course). "The apology is a step in the right direction," he told the Associated Press, but added that he will "keep appealing to them" to do the right thing. The right thing, according to Jackson, is for Teitel and Tillman to cut the scenes from future video and DVD releases of the movie.

Has Jesse Jackson gone completely off the freakin’ deep end? There was a time when I actually admired the guy for talking about things like responsibility, self-reliance and taking pride in heritage. He even, at one point showed flashes of a sense of humor, like the time when he went on "Saturday Night Live" and read Dr. Seuss’ "Green Eggs and Ham" in that sermonesque oratorical style that is pure Jesse Jackson. Now, I guess, he’s too serious and sacred for that kind of thing.

I mean, good Lord, what next? Are celebrities and politicians going to start scouring Letterman and Leno’s late-night monologues and demanding apologies and edits every time they feel insulted?

Jackson has accused the makers of "Barbershop" of "trying to turn tragedy into comedy." Well, duh. Some of the greatest comedy ever created has been made out of tragedy. As the great philosopher Jimmy Buffett once observed, "if we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane."

Of course, the most ironic thing about all of this is that the controversy, like most such controversies, has encouraged people to see the movie. It’s helped keep the film’s box-office take bigger than anyone, even the producers, ever expected. Let’s hope that, for George Tillman Jr. and Bob Teitel, success is the best revenge.

COPYRIGHT 2000 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.