Dick Gregory Advises Drinking A Lot Of Water, And Jumping On A Trampoline; Not Necessarily In That Order

Imus welcomed an effervescent Dick Gregory to the show this morning, and commented on a picture he'd recently seen of Gregory and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose assassination occurred 41 years ago this past Saturday.

"That was three weeks before he was shot," Gregory remarked about the photo. "He walked up to me from behind and said, 'They're going to kill me, aren't they?' I said, 'Doc, they're going to kill us all — better you than me!'"

Gregory noted an interesting aspect of the photograph. "It's the first time I've seen tears in his eyes," Gregory said about King. "It's that look of knowing you have so much work to do, that you don't want to do it. Then three weeks later, it happened."

The recent loss of another civil rights leader, John Hope Franklin, stirred in Gregory thoughts about his undiscovered African-American predecessors who didn't have the same opportunities to shine.

"When you look at Dick Gregory, and Bill Cosby, and Richard Pryor, and think, how many of those were before me that didn't get the chance?" he said.

Gregory pointed out that Michelle Obama is hardly the first impressive black woman to come along; she's just the first to get so much attention. "We've been looking at black women like that all our lives!" he said.

Having been diagnosed with cancer several years back, Gregory's reaction was to pray. "I said, 'God, I know there's a lot of Negroes out there who deserve cancer, but I am not one of them,'" he recalled. "But if you need me to give you 12 names of some black folks, I will handle that."

Gregory does not like to discuss his course of treatment because of the millions of people who might ignorantly follow his path. "They don't know what I know, or the tools to use, or who to call," he said.

He believes sugar is to cancer what gasoline is to fire, and advises people to jump on a trampoline, get plenty of rest, drink water, and eat lots of greens to maintain good health.

"The biggest thing about cancer is the fear!" he said. "All of us don't know someone who died from AIDS. All of us know someone who has died from cancer."

Imus's "fantastic obligation" to humanity, as Gregory sees it, is to recover, because listeners will be inspired when they hear him on the air everyday sounding strong and funny as ever.

"When the news hit that I had serious cancer, the biggest get-well cards were from my creditors," Gregory joked. "They do not want to see you die!"

-Julie Kanfer