Remembering Dick Gregory in our Trumpesque World

I woke to the sad news that Dick Gregory--a favorite comedian and activist--had died at 84. 

"We don't serve colored people," said a waitress to Dick Gregory. "That's okay," he answered, "I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken." I remember, as a child, laughing in front of our family's black-and-white TV as Gregory revealed the ludicrousness of race prejudice:

 

Dick Gregory nudged the United States toward racial harmony using tactics similar to the delightful Tom Lehrer, who is thankfully still among us but, alas, silent in the age of Trump. Lehrer's 1965 classic, National Brotherhood Week (“Step up and shake the hand / Of someone you can’t stand. / You can tolerate him if you try”) attacked the absurdity of trying for racial healing with a single week's devotion to tolerance and "brotherhood: 

Return the worst to laughter: that's what these comedians teach us. Don't react to Trump or Nazis with rage and despair: laugh them into the ground. Trump deserves our constant ridicule. If we must fight, we should fight over statutes, not statues. Statutes, the ones that prevent gay people from getting married or transgender folks from using the restroom. True, statues are fun to pull down--the satisfying clonk of Saddam Hussein's metal counterpart hitting the ground in Baghdad back in 2003 was an occasion for joy--like the dismantling of the Berlin wall, pieces of which you may still buy as a souvenir. Walls were made to be breached, not built, and the likes of Dick Gregory and Tom Lehrer were made to send that message entertainingly. Ellen DeGeneres, get busy. 

In one of his last interviews, Gregory became a prophet who wears his gravitas lightly, like the fool in King Lear:

But we're still not really listening. We're in despair, we're sending petitions, we're marching in the streets, we're doing everything but laugh. Trump is ridiculous, and the more we see him as the two year old misbehaving, the more the powers that be shake their heads and chortle, the better off we'll be. It took months for senators to abandon Joe McCarthy, months to see the nuttiness of the man and his paranoid claims. What fools we mortals be! We need magic--someone like Remus Lupin, waving his wand, shouting, "Riddikulus!" to remind us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, that we're best off laughing, or ruefully shaking our heads at our foolishness: