R.I.P Bernie Mac

If you haven't noticed yet I love standup comedy. For me it's the most realistic and honest form of social commentary of our time. Uncensored, unrated, unrated. We've recently lost a great presence in the entertainment industry, Mr. Bernie Mac, born Bernard Jeffrey McCullough, died at the age of 50, from complications from pneumonia.

I remember seeing Bernie Mac on Kings of Comedy, and thinking... "That one bad mutha f*cker." But I don't think I really understood his contribution to our culture until I took the Sex and Family class at City College of SF with Art Nishimura. Art worked "The Bernie Mac Show" into his cirriculum, as and example to the "New American Experience"(or so I call it), addressing issues such as drug abuse, surrogate parenting, family values, and several differents studies on learning how to except, work with and raise children that have different personalities. Bernie Mac was cut from a different cloth earning himself a position as a cultural a icon and a Peabody Award. You will be missed but your legacy lives on.

"I came from a place where there wasn't a lot of joy," Mac told the AP in 2001. "I decided to try to make other people laugh when there wasn't a lot of things to laugh about."