19901980s NEWS
The Eleventh Hour - Show #326
Title: Dick Gregory
Guests: Dick Gregory
Original Broadcast Date: 3-29-90
Rec: 3/26/90
Title: Dick Gregory
Guests: Dick Gregory
Original Broadcast Date: 3-29-90
Rec: 3/26/90
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WNET30 graphic
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Title Slate: The Eleventh Hour #326; Dick Gregory; Rec: 3/26/90; Dir: Andrew Wilk
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Blank
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Funding for show by announcer and overlay The Eleventh Hour graphic.
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The Eleventh Hour graphics and show opener.
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Show opens. Host Robert Lipsyte seated in studio with backdrop large letters reading "Dick Gregory" and a photo of Gregory. He talks about Dick Gregory as a millionaire weight loss entrepeneuar but states that first time he met him in 1963, Gregory was mourning the loss of the four little girls in a Birmingham church, and wondering how he could go on as a standup comedian during these terrible times.
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Host Robert Lipsyte announces the show and introduces himself.
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Host Lipsyte who's known Gregory throughout his career, 27 years, states that Gregory's career went in a different direction after the bombing of the Alabama church. However, he's still not sure how Gregory's career still relates to selling Diet Powder. He welcomes Dick Gregory to the show.
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INTERVIEW INSERT:
Robert Lipsyte: Greg, welcome. Congress is looking now into the whole diet industry, the idea that people lose the weight and gain right back. But what I've never understood is with all the hungry people in this country in this world, why are you concerned with fatties? Dick Gregory - Civil Rights Activist Comedian: Because I think they eat too much broccoli for one thing. and and the President said he don't like broccoli, that's probably because his mother probably cooked it in olive oil. But if his wife would cook it in pork rind, it would probably. Let me tell you how it works. I started off concerned about hungry people. And could I create a cheap nutrition for the world's starving people. In the process of doing that, I found out that if you don't understand the politics of hunger, then you'll never feed hungry people. For instance, right now we get an alert that some corner of the world people are starving. And we will buy $2 billion worth of food. And the companies get their money when it leaves the warehouse. And it goes and sits on docks because they don't have the roads or the scientific know how, or the ingenuity to distribute it. But remember, the people that sold the food, they don't get paid when hungry people eat, they get paid when it leaves the warehouse. And so looking at all of that, I also found out something else. And when you look at a hungry, malnourished, starving child or human in Bangladesh or Ethiopia, they got a couple of things in common, a bald head and a bloated belly. And then I realized one day that when you go to any major airport in America, and see ball heads and bloated bellies, you're also looking at malnutrition. And what I was able to do was take the same product that I use in Ethiopia, they use in the hospitals, we don't use it in the field, and convert that to a weight loss when it's really nutrition, but nutrition don't sell. People won't buy that says "nutrition" they say weight loss and so we will able to put a package together. Congress is investigating. And they issue it. I mean, there's certain myths out here, L-Tryptophan. I'm not about to believe that that's killing folks, cigarettes is killing folks. So I live in a country that's going to take a vitamin off the market, but they're not gonna take cigarettes off the market, then again, that's big business. And then if the same people that own the cigarette industry bought out L-Tryptophan, then it would be back on the market. And so when you sit and you look, my whole thing is nutrition. I feel ashamed 20 years ago, buying bottled water for my family. When poor folks had to drink what was coming up tap and I knew it was killing them. And so I went out of my way to talk about chlorine and fluorine is no good for you, and try to raise the level to the issue that we'll all eat clean food. I look around today at people talk about teenage pregnancy. And I'm 57 years old. And I'll be honest, I don't know what my youth teenage pregnancy would have been had we had 5,800 chemicals and additives in the food. And so until we sit down and get serious about this whole thing called nutrition, how do it fit in? Well, last year, when you count all the deaths in this country, from everywhere, you can die, homicide, suicide, accidental OD, we had 2.1 million deaths in America. And of those 2.1 million 1.5 million was diet related. Now, anytime you live in a country, that 80% of your deaths is related to what you eat, and then maybe the CIA is watching the wrong thing. Maybe it's not communism, gonna be our downfall. But what we eat is going to be the downfall. Robert Lipsyte: When you say diet related, you're talking about the cancers that are caused by fat. Dick Gregory: High blood pressure, sugar, diabetes, cerebral hemorrhages, and in the sugar, the salts, the water, the whole bit. And until we can change that, and I would just hope that I could use my voice. I remember. See, I was outraged over one day, I looked back and realized why I start drinking and why I started smoking. My heroes was drinking and smoking. I mean, Alan Ladd man, I mean, Clark Gable never said nothing cool without a cigarette. And I love Clark Gable. I wanted to be like Clark Gable, and I looked at one scene with Clark Gable was talking to this white lady. And that curly lock fell down in his hand. Everybody in the black movie said Oh, my man's in trouble. And Clark kind of switched his head around and flip that curly lock back. About three weeks later, I was with my lady man trying to flip a net back and damnit broke my neck. And so that's the effect they had on it. So I looked around one day, and I found out that I'm saying to young folks that drugs and alcohol is bad, but come on in a nightclub and catch my act. And so in 1973, I had my wife Lillian, call the office here in New York and say, Look, after I get past my last contract, don't book me no more nightclubs. And they didn't understand it at first, but it was my country. Alan Ladd, took a cigarette. Humphrey Bogart smoke whiskey. Now I'm 57 years old, and I noticed that my non-heroes didn't drink. Wolf Man, he never snorted no Coke, you know, Dracula never drank no light beer, and Frankenstein ain't never had a cigarette. And so I just didn't want, and I really believe that the salvation to this whole nation in the planet is not food it's nutrition. And I think the number one battle out here, I think sexism, racism, I think until we really get down to talking about our bodies and talking about, for instance, we live in a racist, sexist society and why we tolerate because we all high. It's not normal for a predominantly Christian society to have to drink as much whiskey as we drink. They have to stay as much high as we say, and we don't understand the whole drug thing. You know, I'm a fantastic income. So I leave my wife and she get upset, right? Whatever you do, please don't call the ghetto welfare system because they'll say kill me, you know, because poor folk don't have no recourse. So it's instant gratification. Throw some hot water on them do some whatever, you know, it's a call somebody in your income bracket. See? Dick's acting funny. I think he got another woman. Well, Mister Dude, come on by the house. Let's talk about this. You take my wife to see her psychologist. And it's like that guy's write up some prescription called drugs. Ghetto sisters, oh man, leave her got the same vibration. She got on call and buy her some crack. Two Americans did not deal with a problem from an ethical standpoint, from a spiritual standpoint, from a godly standpoint. They drove them out, they doped him out. And that's what we into, a drugged out doped up society. And when you do that, you will tolerate racism when you do that. And alcohol is the number one problem. Hitler neo nazis wasn't snorting coke and decided to do some Jews in. They was drinking the same whiskey the Klu Klux Klan was drinking to proclaim, get drunk on the weekends and let's go get some niggas. They weren't snorting no coke or mainline. And the number one problem confronting this country today is whiskey, but we tolerate it. Here's a dude down in Lexington, Kentucky last year, got drunk, come off the expressway the wrong way, hit a school bus and killed 27 folks, children. Got eight years in jail. You know, had they found some marijuana in his pocket, or some cocaine, he'd be on the electric chair now. And so I would say that health and nutrition and as far as the you know, Congress, investigating health and nutrition, they should broaden it. They should look in to we had 4,675 Americans last year OD from hard drugs, and 51% of those was prescription drugs. And 52% of those folks was over 60. And the over 60 population in America is less than 17%. |
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INSERT INTERVIEW CONTINUED:
Robert Lipsyte: Greg, Well, what what's the the interface in terms of whose responsibility? I mean, you're talking about the CIA and the White House? What about individual responsibility to clean up their own act? Dick Gregory: This is why a show like this is so good. You know, we've been misused in this country for so long. People, that the one good thing about an America is, we know our place, we can run around and talk about being free and laugh about being free. But we know we've been a mess with the CIA. I mean, here, The New York Times and The Washington Post, they can run stories, but to this day, that Pan Am Flight 103 that was blown out of the sky, the American people have been told it was eight CIA agents on that plane that died. We know about 35 students from Syracuse was on the plane, which was kind of outrageous to me, because that same night, the plane crashedm Syracuse played a basketball game. Robert Lipsyte: Well, Who told you that there were eight CIA agents on board that? Dick Gregory: Well, I heard it from looking at the Foreign Press. But thank God, the Pittsburgh Press -the morning paper in Pittsburgh is the first one that broke the story. It's like the the the what was it, the Houston Post was the first. Robert Lipsyte: So what does it mean to you? Dick Gregory : It means that as long as big time powerful people is doing it, we are wimps, we will sit back and tolerate it. I'm 57. I as a youngster, I went to the movies to see Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront about how the Mafia had taken over the New York docks. I'm 57 years old, now, they still got the New York docks, and the FBI haven't come in here to take them back. And the American people haven't demanded it, because, you know, when we mess with the Mafia, they will kill you. And as long as is weak folks, as long as is poor folks, we'll mess with them when it becomes powerful. But let me say this, education is not power. Money is not power. Information is power. And the more information the American people get, the more they'll be outraged. And the more they will channel that into making changes. Robert Lipsyte: Where are they going to get this information from? Dick Gregory: Shows like this. I mean, we can we can inform people now with television, like never before in the history of the planet. For instance, I mean, I remember there was a time that if you loved a teacher, you would take her a apple. And now if you hate a teacher, you take a apple with all those chemicals in it. I mean, your teacher see you walking in with a Apple that teacher flunk you! And so, but last year, we found out that they were putting chemicals on apples that was killing us. And the federal government said to the industry, we'll give you a year, and the people rose up and said UhUh we'll wait a year for we buy the apples, and they took it out immediately. Robert Lipsyte : What are some of the things we need to know? Dick Gregory: We now we need to know basically about the human body the beauty of the human body. We need to know that in order for me to sit here and hate you because you white that takes the negative electron to do that. negative electrons put acid on my brain Robert Lipsyte : I find that very abstract. I don't get that. Dick Gregory: Well, most folks find it abstract because we so comfortable with. But once you realize, well let me break it down. Let me get down. If I came in today with a pocket full of horse manure to throw on you because you white and I don't like you, whose pockets stunk are they yours or mine. Okay, now I've had this horse manure in my pocket for three days. I've been around my wife, my family and my friends, okay, they have had to smell the nastiness of this filth that I'm harboring for you. Now even when I throw it on you immediately you're going to take it off. So let me back up. horsemanure in my pocket to throw on you because I hate you makes my pocket stink. The same way is hatred I have in my brain for you because I hate you makes my mind stink, and my family is exposed to a stinky mind the same way they expose to a stinky pocket. And if I had a choice of a stinky pocket or stinky mind, I take the stinky pocket because I can throw this coat away. And so the number one problem that we are confronted with, we should really start learning about. You see the problem is, we hear about racism. We hear about sexism, but we don't know what effect it has on the human body. But if someone actually told me that in order for me to step on your head, to keep you down, you determine how far this left legs gonna move, I might think twice before I try to hold you down. See, we listened to words for so long. And, and I think now we are ready to be a information nation. And I will tell you that 10 years from now, the shows we will be seeing on television won't be what we looking at now, won't be all this silliness, it's going to be information. And the network's are going to stand in line to fight to see who, because once I get empowered with information, I mean, I would love to be able to turn on a cable station Robert Lipsyte: What's going to change that. I mean, people seem to prefer entertainment. |
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INSERT INTERVIEW CONTINUED:
Dick Gregory: There's a hunger now. There's a need for it. Now, there was a need for entertainment. Why was the need for entertainment? Let me tell you how, we black folks in America is 12% of America's population. And yet last year, 51% of every movie ticket sold African Americans bought it. Now think about this for a minute, the movie industry did $5 billion. And we African American blacks, which is 12% of population contributed $2.5 billion. We could close that industry down if we had the right information. Robert Lipsyte : Well, what does that tell you about what's going on in the heads of African Americans? Dick Gregory: Priorities, priorites have to be changed. I get up in the morning on Sunday morning, and the greatest institution I have is the Black Baptist Church. It was there when what nothing there, every black college I got came out of that black church. And yet today, I will pay my General Motors note, I'll pay my Chrysler note. But I put on a $300 outfit, put on $30,000 worth of jewelry, get into a $27,000 car and go to that Black Baptist Church and give $5. I have to change my priorities. Michael Jackson come to town, I buy my child a $40 ticket, give him $20 to buy a silly glove and another $10 to buy one sock. But I've never gave that child $20 to join the NAACP, or the Urban League or sdlc, it's priority. Robert Lipsyte: Well why, what's going on in your mind. What don't you see? Dick Gregory: It's I'm ashamed. I don't want to admit that someone has control over my faith and destiny. So I lied to myself. I told me that I'm just ignorant. I told me that it was my mannerism and my behavior. And now that's that's being washed up. I mean, you got black folk coming out now with doctor's degrees. At one time, we really believed that white folk didn't want us in the colleges, because we was too dumb. And now 30 years later, they mad at Asian students because they too smart. I mean, all it wants to say, Oh my God, we have to have a quota here, or 42% of everybody in Ivy League schools will be Asian students right, you're not gonna have it both ways. And so we've looked at this thing long enough. And there's been other broader issues. Robert Lipsyte: Well, yeah, you know, you've talked about Bangladesh in hunger earlier in the show. Central Harlem has been compared to Bangladesh in terms of mortality rates. You have a better chance of living. A black male, black male has a better chance of living if he's born in Bangladesh than in Centra Harlem. |
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INSERT INTERVIEW CONTINUED:
Dick Gregory: Now, that's doesn't just mean central Harlem, it means central every major central city across this country. Robert Lipsyte: Every ghetto every central city. Dick Gregory: All right. Now, once we change those priorities, let's move out of Central Harlem for a minute because we see poor, devastation, no help, crime. Now, about 25 years, 27 years ago, Meharry University with a brilliant black, Dr. John Thomas, came together and did a joint venture with Johns Hopkins University. John Hopkins University, basically white medical school, Meharry University, basically black medical school, and they said, here's what we're going to do. For every black doctor that graduates we're going to track them with a white doctor. By that means we're going to take a doctor for doctor, and 25-27 years later, they found out 25% of the black doctors was dead, against 5% of the white doctors was dead. Same education, same income, the whole thing. It's the stress. To me to be Black, to peacefully coexist with a system that insults me will kill me. In Bangladesh, they don't have to do that Bangladesh, they just deal with poverty. Here I got to deal with poverty and insults, insults that I don't want nobody to know about. So I harbor them inside of me. And so that makes me hate me, that makes me abuse me. And that makes me abuse you if you black. So then when you look at my statistics, we are less than 12% of America's population. But last year, we was responsible for 74% of all the homicide. Now the only thing that it makes that not sound outrageous to me. I also know we're 12% of America's population, but 83% of everybody in America on kidney dialysis machines is black folks. Now I also know why we get the by 51% of all the movie tickets. something in me is so corrupt because I tolerate this system without raising my voice that I'm trying to entertain it out. We have no choice now, a black male, aged 20 to 24. The number one cause of death is homicide. When I get around young blacks, I find how old are you? When I say 20 to 21? I get to getti' because I know they on their way to kill somebody. But somewhere we, as black folks have to understand the stress, the diet, the hostility. For instance, not in ratio proportion, but in actual numbers we African Black Americans out die the white folks, number wise in every way you can die in America except automobile. Something about a white dude, they get a light Bud, an automobile that finds a oak tree doing 80 miles an hour. Now whenever they decide we're not going to drive for a month, then we'll surpass that too. And so until we understand how the diet, how the anger, who we get the example from? Elijah Muhammad. Elijah Muhammad came through and took the scum of the black community and included in that area in Harlem. And I bet if we go there, Muslims will survive pays for it. And what did he do? Did he send them to Harvard or Yale or MIT or Columbia or Morehouse? No, he said, say no to dope and yes to God. Okay. We in the Christian society say no to dope, but don't say yes to nobody. Two, he rearranged their diet. You took a Malcolm X, a hoodlum, a thug, a hopeless, a hustler, a dope push and a drug addict. When Malcolm left his plan, he left the most honest, ethical, one of that have ever lived in the history of this planet. How did he get him like that? Did he sent him to Harvard?Did he send him to Columbia? No, he said, No to dope, yes to God, Allah and rearranged the diet. So we already have the answer. And until we understand the role that diets play in our society, and one other thing that we African American blacks have to understand there's been, first let me qualify this. White racist people have never been a problem. Every the dumbest black person I know enough to make a white racist like them. It's a white racist system that have no mother, no feelings that will kill white folks on the way to get me. Now, once we tune into this, I have 10 black children. If my wife and I had never been around no one but our children, in other words, locked them in a room so those children would never come in contact with no one. But Lillian and Dick 30 years later, my children has a white racist mentality, because me and Lil has a white racist mentality. And you sitting there as close as we are, you can never think for me, that's why I was thrilled that you came and wrote nigga with me, because you have a different mentality, you would see a different because I wanted to talk to a different audience. And what do I mean by that? Police will think twice before they go to a white dude's house in the middle of the night with a search warrant, because they know a free mind won't tolerate that. You come by my house anytime you get ready. Think about something for a minute. Think about how many African American black cops they are in America. And think about when is the last time you ever heard a white person complaining about black police brutality, just think about it. I mean, in my subconscious mind, I know you're not gonna tolerate, there's certain things that we know you will tolerate. And certain things we know that you won't tolerate. And so when that priority starts being checked, we have the answer. We have the NAACP, the Urban League, we have the SCLC, we have the Jesse Jackson, what we need to do is stop letting the American press determine who our role models going to be. My role model might be my mom, my wife, might be my aunt, might be one of my sons or daughters. Why do we have to be an athlete? Why do we have to be a celebrity and a funny thing about being a black athlete in America? If I had a child who was gonna play pro sports, you know what I tell him? Whatever you do, don't be a superstar. Why dad, because until you become a black superstar in America, you can get busted for dope. Two people in sports, you don't get busted for dope is a white dude, at White superstar and a black who's not a superstar. Robert Lipsyte: Speaking of dope, I noticed that you've been getting busted again these days, in front of head shops, dope paraphernalia stores, what's that about? Why are you doing this? Dick Gregory: I just think it legitimizes a whole tragedy that's happening to America today, too, to say to your child, that drugs is bad. And they heard ,it not coming from the President of the United States who have really talked more about his dislike for broccoli, than he has his dislike for drugs, and I'm not saying to use drugs, but I'm saying he's never, we've never heard the President day after day after day after day talk about drugs, like he's talked about with the forest, and he's talked about broccoli. And so to say to your child, drugs is bad. Dope is bad. And then on the way to shop, they go into a little store to buy penny candy, and they see drug paraphernalia, there's so openly in a little child's mind, they see bad things hidden. They see bad things that shouldn't be out. I mean, that's what they mean. So it legitimizes that whole bit and so father Clements a father figure in Chicago approached me, and I really didn't understand it at first, and I said, well, let's go out let's go stand on the street corners and and say we willing to die. And the more the viciousness, the closest I've ever come to the civil rights movement now is when you walk in those head shops, I hear the same thing you are outsider you just a rich nigga, you know whose telling me that? A Blackstone! I was like I was in Mississippi, right? The interesting thing about the head shop - you can close them down. Why? Because the press is going to be there with you. And the power structure is not going to let them loose, stupid. Nothing mom and pop stores give the city a bad name. Now, if you was jumping on the fortune 500 that would be a different story. Robert Lipsyte: Do you think this is going to make a difference, where's this going to go? Dick Gregory: It's gonna make a difference. Right now within the last six months there's been 15 states that put some fantastic drug paraphernalia laws on the books. It sends a message out to say that we're not gonna let you legitimize it and it also sends a message. Now I'm not gonna get into calling the names of the companies today because we still researching it. It sends a message to the major glass companies that you're not gonna make my baby bottles and my cocaine pipes too. You're not gonna bring 'em in and kill 'em while they are here. And so it says it says Robert Lipsyte You think a glass company is making the crack viles? Dick Gregory: No, I'm not just about the crack vials. I'm talking about the pipes and the pipes. I mean, that's not just the move. And another thing we got to talk about. We perceive in African American black really should start getting upset over this. We percieve from the news we see in America that drugs run from the ghetto to Colombia. And yet 75% of all coke in America is snorted by white folks what really caught me by surprise, because within their little bitty nostrils, you know, I say well, I mean, white folk must be snorting coke 15-16 hours a day. And let me tell you something White America, you better hope and pray that black folk don't take a liking to coke like you because whit our nostrils we snort up all the coke and Peru in a week and you be in trouble. Okay, now |
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Interview ends. Robert Lipsyte laughs and thanks Dick Gregory. He announces the show and introduces himself. Show Ends.
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Show credits overlay Robert Lipsyte and Dick Gregory sitting across from each other in the studio.
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Funding for the show by announcer overlay the Eleventh Hour graphic.
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Reel end.
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