Dick Gregory Finds One Thing More Powerful Than Imus

The legendary and likeable comedian Dick Gregory, in New York for a gig tonight at Caroline's on Broadway, paid Imus a visit this morning. As usual, he managed to impress and intrigue us with his unique take on world events.

In Mexico at the time of the swine flu outbreak, Gregory figured he'd go to church "to save my ass," he said, eloquently. Upon arrival, he found the doors locked.

"How are you going to protect me from the devil when you can't deal with a little lightweight flu shot?" he asked. "But the whore houses were open!"

He graded President Barack Obama's first 100 days in office an "A-plus-plus," but cautioned, "You can't determine a person's true value when they've inherited a mess."

Gregory encouraged Obama to listen to President Roosevelt's fireside chats, which centered not on banks or greed, but on something more important.

"He was talking to the American people; my grandmother didn't want to hear nothing about IBM!" said Gregory. "She wanted somebody to tell her it's going to be alright."

Regarding Wanda Sykes's performance at last week's White House Correspondents Dinner, Imus observed that a joke about hoping Rush Limbaugh's kidneys fail flew under the radar because Sykes is a black, female comedian.

"He ought to be able to say the same thing about her, and not be run out of the country, and he would be if he did," Imus said.

Gregory called it "a game," and understands people reacting one way or another. He said Americans lack a certain sensitivity that he has seen displayed elsewhere, for instance at last month's G-20 convention in London.

"For the last 20 years at these conventions, they always hang the President of the United States in effigy-except this time, because they're sensitive to lynching," Gregory said. "How can Europeans be that sensitive when we're not? Because we haven't had to."

He compared the U.S. to a dirty steel worker at a party, who has changed into a fancy suit but failed to bathe. ""I'm bringing a sticky, nasty, sweaty body to the party, and I'm wondering who stinks, and it's me," he said. "America has never taken a bath; we just cover up everything."

A fan of Rush Limbaugh's because he gives white folks "a representative they can turn on," Gregory said the people he knows who listen to Limbaugh have serious problems at home. On the other hand, the smart, important people he knows listen to Imus.

"We're very powerful," Imus said, ever humble. "I do know that."

To which Gregory aptly replied, "Crack is powerful!"

-Julie Kanfer