Who You with, Bernie Mac?

Who You with, Bernie Mac? by Roxanne McDonald

In so many Bernie Mac Show episodes, Mac comes to the rescue of the kids. This he has been doing all his life.

In one especially endearing show, Bernie Mac has inadvertently taught Jordan to use stand-up humor to get through a nerve-wracking public performance (Jordan freezes during a spelling bee). When Jordan of course misunderstands the lesson and decides to go the comedy route, the kid bombs. Rather than express disappointment (to America, in that grumpy way he has that makes him Bernie Mac, comic genius) and leave it at that, Bernie Mac appears on stage and starts his own routine, picking up with where the first humiliated now relieved Jordan leaves off.

This is exemplary of the man in real life. In 1970s Chicago, after his single parent Mary died of cancer (when Mac was 16), Mac began doing shows for fellow students and kids in the rough and tumble neighborhood.

After these free-for-alls, a stint at the Regal Theatre, and through a series of odd jobs as bread delivery representative, furniture mover, and UPS agent, Mac went professional, starting at the age of 19 and struggling through years of virtual un-recognition (reportedly because he “refused to change his name”?)

But by the early nineties, when he was featured in, co-starred in, or appeared in such films as Mo’ Money (his debut, 1992), Who’s the Man? (1993), House Party 3 (1994) and The Walking Dead (1995), Bernie Mac was gaining status as a serious comic.

In 1995, Bernie Mac made the crossover from serious to seriously funny, doing an HBO special titled “Midnight Mac,” then playing Pastor Clever to Chris Tucker’s Smokey in Friday (1995). As IMDB declares, these latter performances got Mac a cult following, one which has trailed him closely through

comic roles in Spike Lee’s Get on the Bus (1996), Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1996), on “Moesha” (1996- ), in How to Be a Player (1997), Life (1999), in The Original Kings of Comedy (2000), What’s the Worst That Could Happen? (2001), and a straighter role in Ocean’s Eleven (2001).
Also in 2001, the one who refused to change his name, his image, or his comedy, brought us “The Bernie Mac Show,” expressing and showing that who he was and who he was with has not changed.

And because in that sit-com that still runs four to six nights a week he is still the comically grousing, comically self-absorbed and persecuted parent…who brings a sensitive moment to each of the comic vignettes, he is still with us in humor as we are still with him in heart.

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