Dick Gregory's Got No Sympathy For the I-Man

Fresh off his stellar performance at yesterday’s “Imus at Night” spectacular, Dick Gregory was still having fun this morning. He had especially enjoyed the comedy of Imus in the Morning’s resident funnymen Rob Bartlett and Tony Powell last night, saying, “They ought to be in jail, they so funny.”

Though he was up late, Gregory was ready to go for his interview with Imus today, saying he frequently falls asleep “on the way down to the pillow” because he is fasting.

“Someone asked me, ‘You’ve been fasting for 40 years now, what does your doctor think?’” said Gregory. “My doctor’s been dead 30 years.”

In his lifelong pursuit of social justice by way of activism, Gregory is fasting to remind people of the ongoing tragedy in Haiti since the massive earthquake there in January. Though there have been moments of beauty in the Haitians’ resilience, the aftermath has been mostly dire, leading Gregory to wonder…

“There was no food, there was no water, there was no roads,” he said. “But all the news people—they weren’t hungry, they didn’t look dehydrated. If I’d have been Haitian, I’d have followed them.”

Getting to know Gregory over the last two years has been, for the I-Man, a true honor. “I never met Elvis,” he told his guest. “And I never thought I’d ever get to meet you.”

But the love-fest was mutual, with Gregory praising Imus for the “unbelievable” satire on this show. “If I had one wish for this show, it would be that Mark Twain could come back from somewhere, and just sit back there and listen,” said Gregory.

Though Imus himself was less than pleased with certain aspects of this morning’s broadcast, he took a note from Jerry Weintraub’s life and decided he should “fire Ferguson” and move on.

(For an explanation of that reference, buy Weintraub’s memoir, When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead)

Gregory believes that it’s generally more stressful to worry about bad things happening—like losing a job or getting sick with no health insurance—than to actually have them happen. To that end, he praised Imus for his bravery in addressing his prostate cancer every single morning on the air.

“I wasn’t even thinking about my cancer, until you just brought it up,” Imus said, trying to make his guest feel bad. But Gregory, a cancer survivor, wasn’t having it.

“I’m glad I brought it up!” he declared, and said that when he had cancer, he turned to his old Baptist prayers. “I said, ‘God, I know a lot of Negroes out there deserve cancer, but I’m not one of them.’”

In fact, Gregory reasoned with the Lord, “If you need some Negroes, I can get you a list of 12!”

-Julie Kanfer