The Wanda Sykes fan club thread

The segment about drinking making you feel sexy and getting older in her standup special on Comedy Central was great.

I've never seen her show.

She's hilarious in a crank yankers prank call about a tird in the backseat of her car.

"ASM PLASM-A-TASM?"

When Cosby went to collect a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Emmys, cohost Wanda Sykes asked him in all of her stereotypical finger-snapping, ghetto-girl glory how he managed to get where he did. “I spoke English,” Cosby remarked. He’s particularly irritated that the image of African-American equality he gave us on “The Cosby Show” isn’t more of a reality. Furious at the increased opposition to affirmative action, Cosby says, “There’s no admission at all at the severe lack of equality minority kids have from day one.”

and Fat Albert weren't
non-stereotypical
their own damned selves. SNAP!

It goes something like that...

It was a conversation between Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor re: Cosby.

Ironically enough, he's become a rather unfunny version of Bill Cosby himself:
Pluto Nash=Leonard Part 6?

http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid66219.asp

Love this woman so much.

her voice is quite the comedy mallet

cohost Wanda Sykes asked him in all of her stereotypical finger-snapping, ghetto-girl glory how he managed to get where he did

Hands up: has Wanda Sykes ever read to you as remotely "ghetto?"

wtf

P.S. I watched several episodes of her short-lived TV show one weekend -- despite some Morbs-like fears that her voice might become a bit much after the first 30 minutes or so -- and it was pretty likable: it involves her being on a McLaughlin-style news panel show!

she reminds me more of the funny IT ladies in my girlfriend's office

btw, I love the mallet voice.

seriously boggling here

I mean, I should not be at all surprised that "affluent, non-snooty suburban black person" is going to be equated to "ghetto" in some people's minds but COME THE FUCK ON

anyone who didn't know Wanda Sykes was gay hasn't been paying attention. Saw her live nearly a yr ago and she was all "my girlfriend this", "my girlfriend that" and not in a bff gf sense.

^^^ this

or we just haven't seen her live!

(I've seen her mostly 'panelling' on the toob)

she's also been pretty gay on Ellen

ghetto Wanda

xxxxpost - That's it exactly, with the office thing -- watching her stand-up stuff, she reads like someone who'd otherwise be sitting in the back of an office bitching about her co-workers. I mean, practically everything about her persona and comedy is so middle-class-professional crotchety!

Favorite Sykes line: she was on Leno, who asked her about what she thought about that racist shit Don Imus had said. Sykes said, "I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I thought Don Imus died nine years ago."

omg I had forgotten about that "Pootie Tang" scene, hahahahahahahaha

She was such a good fit for Curb Your Enthusiasm, considering her whole trade is having the best "what the hell is wrong with you" expression in the business.

count me in the wanda sykes fanclub too

Curb Your Enthusiasm turned me into a fan

she rules

I always liked her stand-up when she was getting started, and I remember being thrilled when she popped up as a guest star on the Drew Carey Show, as embarrassing as that might be to admit. Also loved her on Inside the NFL!

i love her.

A fan since Chris Rock's talk show. Hilarious on Curb Your Enthusiasm, where she gives as good as Larry David.

I would almost maybe think about watching The New Adventures of Old Christine, that is how much I love Wanda Sykes.

nothing wrong with her on 'old christine' -- nothing wrong with the show itself either

Savvy choice, assuming she plays nice and sticks the Chief only for "long-windedness" etc.

Wanda Sykes to entertain at correspondents' dinner

By ERIN CARLSON

NEW YORK (AP) — Wanda Sykes will soon get the chance to make fun of President Barack Obama to his face.

The comic actress said Thursday that she has been selected as the entertainer at the annual White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner in Washington, slated for May 9.

Obama is expected to attend the black-tie affair at the Washington Hilton and to follow in his predecessors' tradition by putting on a comedy act of his own. The guest list of some 2,000 people will likely include the usual mix of Washington elite, White House press corps and Hollywood celebrities.

"The first thing I did when they asked me to do this gig — I made sure my taxes were paid," quipped Sykes, taking a dig at the withdrawal of former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle from Obama's cabinet due to unpaid taxes.

Sykes, who booked the gig this week, said the idea of performing for such a high-profile crowd is "scary but very exciting." The dinner has tripped up comedians before. Rich Little and Stephen Colbert both provoked criticism of their performances before the crowd.

She said it's her job to "poke fun and ridicule," and even a popular figure like Obama isn't off limits. She already has some ideas about what she could mine for laughs. For example, she noted, Obama can be "a little long-winded. So we can get him on that."

http://www.advocate.com/issue_story_ektid71760.asp

Her father was an Army colonel who worked at the Pentagon, and her mother was a banker. So, after college (Sykes studied marketing at Hampton University, a historically black college in Virginia), she did just that: She spent five years as a contracting specialist for the National Security Agency, an intelligence branch of the Defense Department. The young woman with the big mouth was stuck doing paperwork, and she was bored. “I still had the same personality -- I was funny at work -- but it got to the point of, like, I’m just wasting my time here.”

Oooh, I like Wandy Sykes. This could be fun.

Hitch is jus jellus.

beginning to understand why Dutch guys keep trying to put their thumbs in me

xpost, God DAMN it.

Wait, is this Christopher "Why Women Aren't Funny" Hitchens? Will read.

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/79629/thumbs/s-CHRISTOPHER-HITCHENS-WANDA-SYKES-large.jpg

lol sooo wasted

He's turned into Anakin Skywalker after they take the helmet off.

Not much to read, I found out.

I didn't really know how to react to the Sykes routine. Like yeah part of me thought a lot of this was real pedestrian stand up and I was wonderin like 'uhh so when is she gonna bring up his dog'. But a lot of it felt like casual dinner table 'lol busted u r right I do brag about my game to my wife', and a good deal just felt casual and cute. Like when she asked who had the idea to give the queen an ipod, Michelle's big grin and point at her husband was kinda priceless.

But I guess that I thought the first lady had funnier moments in Wanda Sykes' routine than Wanda Sykes is kinda saying somethin.

Overall I gotta say in spite of some awkwardness I had some genuine lols and overall I'm a Sykes fan, I was just a little disappointed by this one.

You may remember the evening of Sept. 29, 2001. On that evening, Rudy Giuliani appeared on Saturday Night Live. It was 18 days after the September 11 attacks. This appearance of the mayor of New York — who had spent almost three weeks comforting a shaken nation, mourning with families of the murdered, and leading — was widely considered a signal: We could laugh again. We needed to laugh. Heaven knows, Giuliani must have needed it as much as anyone.

Laughter can be a beautiful thing, a great gift in difficult times. A way to reach those who might not otherwise respond to you or your message. Laughter can also be something vicious, coming from a very dark place.

The latter is what enveloped our nation’s capital at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night. Jokes about our former president and vice president. Jokes about interrogation. Jokes about gay marriage. Jokes about abstinence. Jokes about terrorism. Jokes about addiction. Jokes about abortion and embryo destruction. And the president of the United States was the headliner, responsible for some but not all of the shamefulness of the night.

The last time I was at the Naval Observatory was in December, at the then vice president’s Christmas party. Toward the back of the room was a screen displaying photos. There was humor in them — Dick Cheney wearing a Darth Vader mask — but they also documented what was overwhelmingly present in the eight years of the Bush presidency: We are at war. We are in a war not of our choosing. And the responsibility to protect and defend America weighed heavily on our elected leaders each day.

Cheney is on the sidelines now, and there is a new party in town. The new president, insulting the administration before him, told us in his inaugural that he was going to put away childish things.

But even the children were not left out of the jokes. President Obama used his daughters to make light of Air Force One’s Lower Manhattan flyover. Before Saturday night, there was no better visual symbol of this administration’s September 10 policy blindness. Air Force One might as well have been flying a banner that read “We Don’t Get It.” Obama’s joke about the incident could be considered the banner.

Following the president, Wanda Sykes said:

Mr. President . . . you’ve had your fair share of critics. . . . Rush Limbaugh, one of your big critics, boy — Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails. So you’re saying, “I hope America fails.” You’re like, “I don’t care about people losing their homes, their jobs, or our soldiers in Iraq.” He just wants our country to fail.

To me, that’s treason. He’s not saying anything differently than Osama bin Laden is saying. You know you might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker but he was just so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight.

Too much?

You’re laughing inside, I know you’re laughing.

Rush Limbaugh: “I hope the country fails.” I hope his kidneys fail, how about that?

He needs a waterboarding, that’s what he needs.

And some of the most prominent luminaries in Washington politics, media, and popular culture laughed. You don’t have to be a “dittohead” to know that is shameful (and it would be just as shameful if the rant were about a left-wing host, at a right-wing gala).

But Sykes wasn’t the core problem, as tasteless and awful as her jokes were. I keep going back to Sasha and Malia. The president used his daughters, two days after he let one of his staff take the fall for his administration’s use of everyone in Lower Manhattan and along the Hudson River on a clear morning as a prop in the Obama show. Nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered on a day not unlike that one, and his administration needlessly freaked out those who witnessed it. And he’s laughing.

Of course, that was his job Saturday night. To go to the Reagan Hilton and entertain the media and Hollywood audience. Presumably the crowd likes him (he joked about this too) and hates Rush. He knew what the crowd wanted and ran with it. It was unpresidential when Bush did that (remember looking for weapons of mass destruction at the Radio and TV Correspondents’ Dinner?) and it’s unpresidential when Obama does it. And it’s downright shameful when done with the meanspiritedness that was on display Saturday night.

Somehow Dick Cheney, who continues to stand athwart unseriousness yelling “Stop,” is the enemy. Somehow Rush Limbaugh, conservative stalwart, the embodiment of capitalist success, a man who has struggled with adversity with an inspiring humility, is someone we’re to disdain so much as to laugh at the prospect of his kidneys’ failing. Somehow we are supposed to be pining for one of the nastiest men on television to do something that everyone laughing at the joke presumably considers torture to Sean Hannity, who, agree with him or not, is the happiest of warriors compared with Keith Olbermann.

The reviews of the president Saturday night were good, I keep hearing. But what happened Saturday night was not right. The same liberal elite that has brought us hate-crimes laws and speech codes spewed real venom. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is below the president, whoever he is (I thought this when Bush was president and I think it even more today). But that dinner Saturday night —in the jokes the president of the United States of America was willing to make and to laugh at — was beneath America.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor of National Review Online.

ick @ "stand athwart unseriousness"

I'm trying to remember, was it Rush or some other conservative voice who was center to that whole "Barack The Magic Negro" thing?

nm, it was Rush.

basically, the Colbert event shifted the paradigm for this thing, but just for a year. Now it's back to a safe, clubby, backscratching circle jerk for The Elites (Wanda included).

any circle jerk including Wanda Sykes is a circle jerk I'd be glad to participate in

maybe I should rephrase that

So on Slate today Christopher Hitchens refers to her twice as a "Sable Sapphist," which possibly he thinks is clever but is actually one of the creepiest things I've ever seen from him.

Also he has a poor imagination:

...it's near-impossible to imagine our Sable Sapphist lampooning a black equivalent of Limbaugh for an addiction to, say, crack.

Cuz these days I actually find it really, really easy to imagine Wanda Sykes whipping out some Marion Barry jokes

"Limbaugh's dependence, like Bush's dyslexia, is actually a disability. Can you easily picture any jokes from the Sable Sapphist that would in any other way breach the protocols of the Americans With Disabilities Act? Any other person of whom she would dare say, "I hope his kidneys fail"? Any other context in which torture would be funny enough for her to yell, "He needs a water-boarding, that's what he needs"? Reality and comedy check here: Would she even say this about Osama Bin Laden?"

Hitchens referred to Obama as a mulatto Dukakis during the campaign. I think the Obama era is pretty tough on him.

Of course, Hitchens is not exactly a fan of female comedians in general.

not a mulatto dukakis, a "dusky dukakis"

Wait, drug addiction is covered under the ADA? Is that why House M.D. still has a job?

yeah, I knew mulatto wasn't quite right. man just can't resist some good alliteration.

send him a nametag reading "Dipsomaniacal Dipshit"

peach-skinned problem drinker

sallow sot

ivory inebriate

Beirut Brawler

In both cases Hitch is also resurrecting racial language that's positively antiquated and thus more racist-sounding. I'm surprised he didn't call her a Negress in passing.

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,020 for nubile negress

Results 1 - 10 of about 581 for "nubile negress"

lol good correction PP -- these scientific results are meaningless if we dont search as a phrase

Limbaugh's dependence, like Bush's dyslexia, is actually a disability

I guess all of the drunk comments have hit a nerve.

monomaniacal mongoloid

Man, these advertisements for the new Wanda Sykes show are getting me really excited!!!

http://blogs.ajc.com/radio-tv-talk/files/2009/07/wanda_sykes-1-evan_almighty.jpg

"Do we REALLY need another study about how overweight Americans are? I mean, can't we just look in the mirror?"

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh GOD DAMN Wanda Sykes, I can't believe you went there, holy SHIT

her stand up special was pretty great

Did Larry David write it?

ba dum dum

dumb dumb

you are racist, btw

wtf

jk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWS0GVOQPs0

yeah those wanda promos are super funny

syke!

can someone summarize the 300 posts that happened in the past year? what the hell was there to talk about?

white house correspondents' dinner

ohh right

saw the first half -- kind of a mess! No interviews in the first 30 mins either, wtf?

And she shouldn't try to be Jon Stewart, and really REALLY needs to get off Obama's dick.

She isn't trying to be Jon Stewart as much as she's being Chelsea Handler, which is kind of.... uh.

Unlike Jimmy Fallon, I'll watch her show again, but this didn't really inspire much confidence.