After just one episode, comedian DL Hughley’s new CNN show, “DL Hughley Breaks the News” is getting a chilly reception from a number of critics.
Journalist and culture critic Jimi Izrael offered harsh words for both Hughley and CNN for a skit depicting mortgage company Freddie Mac as a black pimp.
“When [Hughley] brought out Donnell Rawlings to play ‘Freddie Mack [sic],’ I had to check my watch: never have I seen a program jump the shark so quickly,”Izrael says of the skit. “This is someone’s white hipster doofus’ idea of post-racial humor in the New America: Chappelle Lite. The good folks at CNN think that any black person talking loud must be funny. They are mistaken.”
Izrael concluded saying the show “has no place on CNN.”
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Paul Porter, co-founder of media watchdog group Industry Ears says that even though America may elect its first African American president this Tuesday, “television news is still stuck in a ‘Jim Crow’ state of mind.”
“DL’s material was immensely stereo typical, but calculated programming that continues to stifle mainstream media perceptions,”Porter states. “CNN’s attempt of a Flava Flav style of African American entertainment is an alarming step backward for a respected news organization.”
Dr. Boyce Watkins was also not pleased with what he saw and heard on Hughley’s show.
“Nearly every joke on Hughley’s show came back to some generalized stereotype, reminding us that African Americans are seen as relatively trifling “social critters” and not much of anything else. My good friend Roland Martin at CNN has never received the same respect as political caricatures like Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck. So, the most degrading thing CNN can do is to finally give an African American a show after he agrees to turn the stellar Obama presidential campaign into a minstrel show. I am not sure if Flavor Flav or Juan Williams (the educated version of Flavor Flav) could have done a better job.”
