Check out Dick Gregory at Caroline's!

Imus’s old buddy Dick Gregory, the comedian and social activist, wasted no time wishing the host of this program a happy Black History Month. Though he noted many black people aren’t thrilled to be so closely associated with February.
 
“Wouldn’t you know, when they give us a month, it’s the month of February, with all them days missing?” Gregory said. “I didn’t expect a 31-dayer, but February?”
 
Like Imus, Gregory’s also not thrilled with Groundhog’s Day, where, according to Imus, a little marmot is drugged for the pleasure of old, fat, drunk morons. “Let Michael Vick do it!” Gregory suggested. Not helpful.
 
There are few people more familiar with civil rights movements than Gregory, and he compared the awakening in Egypt of late to the stirring in this country in the 1960s.
 
“There’s something about people,” he said. “When they decide that they don’t mind dying, then a tank can’t stop ‘em.”
 
And once people get a taste of freedom, they can’t get it out of their mouths. “Once you break that ice, then everything opens up,” Gregory said. “And you see them walking there with their children, ready to die…not ready to kill.”
 
An activist at heart, Gregory often travels around the country promoting peace. “But every time I go to a peace movement and get on a plane, they take my tax money and buy bombs,” he said. “So how holy am I?”
 
Gregory performed last night and will do the same tonight at Caroline’s on Broadway in New York City, which he called “one of the great rooms for comedy in the country.” Asked if he’d ever been there, Imus said, “I probably have, but I just don’t remember.”
 
Sounds about right.
 
-Julie Kanfer