June 8, 2023

At this point in my life, Bill Cosby went from being an actual human being who did things like breath, eat, give Theo life lessonsharshly and unfairly judge the actions of other black people, and drug women, to just not being here on the planet earth. And so, when Bill Cosby, via his camp, decided to insert himself in Eddie Murphy’s SNL return, my first reaction was, “Wait, ain’t that mf dead?” Like, I know Bill Cosby was still alive, making pudding pops in someone’s cafeteria for virtually no paper, but because he’s been in prison for what seems like a long time, I thought the nigga was legit dead.

Also, I know I’m not the only one who imagines him whipping up pudding pops and “pull yourself up by the bootstrap” lectures.

Jello Pudding and “Stop Listening to Hip Hop” lectures aside, Eddie Murphy made his triumphant return to SNL, the OG sketch comedy show that helped launched his comedy and movie (and music) career. During this monumental return that undoubtedly featured a spike in black viewership, Eddie resurrected some of his most famous characters he created and portrayed during the height of his SNL days and delivered a fantastic monologue which featured four other black comedy giants; Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan and Kenan Thompson. Yes mf’s, Kenan is a black comedy giant who has been in our TV lives damn near our entire TV watching career, and y’all better put some respect on his name.

Cosby, who hasn’t been nearly as loquacious (hence why I killed him in my head) since his freedom was taken away decided that enough was enough, and that Eddie Murphy’s benign joke went over the line. In the SNL monologue, Eddie joked, “But 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. Who is America’s Dad, now?”

Cosby, who decided that after ignoring ALL the other rape jokes that have been said about him through the years, including the rape joke by Hannibal Buress that started the out-pour of allegations which ultimately landed him in prison for the rest of his life, apparently had it up to here with rape jokes, well, Eddie Murphy rape jokes, and fired a shot back at Eddie Murphy, with a fairly scathing and ironic (in a bad way, for Cosby) retort. “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,” Andrew Wyatt, Cosby’s spokesperson, said in a statement, per the New York Post.

Did this nigga really reference freedom when he is in prison, not being free?

This isn’t the first time Cosby and Eddie have had their beef spill out into the streets and tabloids. They have been locked in this “I don’t really fuck with buddy like that” feud for years, with Murphy being the one taking most of the outwardly verbal black on black comedic. In a 2019 episode of Comedians in Cars, Murphy told Jerry Seinfeld that Cosby would lecture the comedian early on his career and was generally overbearing. “He had a weird thing with me that he didn’t have with other comics,” he said. “It was mean.” “He wasn’t nice,” Murphy added. “He wasn’t doing that with everybody, he was doing that with me specifically. He was shitty with me.” Back in 2015, Murphy also made jokes about Cosby in his acceptance speech for the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. “Bill has one of these,” Murphy said, referring to the award. “Did you all make Bill give his back? You know you fucked up when they want you to give your trophies back.”

Anyone who follows my work should know by now that my petty levels as a human being have never been higher. So even though a part of me would like Eddie Murphy to stop stomping a man while he’s down, another part of me, the most important part, wants Eddie Murphy to keep firing off petty jokes at Bill Cosby.

But why, though?

Because fuck em. That’s why.

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