One of my favorite scenes is where Black Dynamite and his henchmen have tied up one of Mister Big's underlings in a chair, some white guy, and they're interrogating him about the Anaconda Malt Liquor drug trade. The underling is defiant and he repeatedly answers Black Dynamite's queries with the charge of "Coon!" And he gets hit on the head with a blackjack and the humor lies in his seemingly not knowing that he's going to get hit on the head every time he calls Black Dynamite a coon.
In my imaginary TV show that I am writing inside my mind, there is a segment called The Adventures of Honky and Coon. I like the title because it activates all required hot buttons and it has a nice cadence and mellifluousness to it. Overall it's got a nice ring.
In it, our heroes are detectives in a New York police station house, kind of like Barney Miller. The white guy's name is Jared G. Coon. His partner, a black guy, was supposed to be named Hank when he was born. But due to a clerical error at the hospital, his name was recorded in his birth records as "Honk." Various intractable legal complications compounded the problem and now it's impossible for him to correct the error. So all his records indicate that his legal name is Honk E. Jackson.
The show is about their madcap adventures.
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I've been watching that Dylan Ratigan show. He has sort of a co-host on there now and again, a man by the name of Toure. And they discuss racial matters. I'm all for discussing things. So Toure talks about his perspectives as a black man, and Ratigan faux-bemoans his white privilege.
You guys want to improve your ratings? Take it from a showman: You should do some sort of hidden camera thing, maybe someone's mic got left on during an unbroadcast part of the show or a run-through, and Ratigan makes like he thinks no one's listening, and he says to himself, under his breath, "Who let this coon on my show? And then Ratigan just spins himself up and goes on his "secret" rant for a couple of minutes. And then this footage of Ratigan's racist rant "accidentally" winds up on the internet.
And then there's a big stink, and the head of MSNBC has to issue press releases about the racial tensions on the set and of how there was a knife fight involving Toure and Ratigan.
Won't that be fun? Just sit back and watch the commotion unfold. Delight in your chaos. Savor your handiwork.
