Pryor's priorities
For all the tragedy and pain in his personal life, the late Richard Pryor was a comic genius.
In the coverage of Pryor's death, much of the attention has been focused on the edginess of his humor and his use of the n-word (until he abandoned it late in his career).
Both subjects are fair game. But Pryor's most important legacy is that he was funny and that behind much of his humor were messages that all people could relate to.
Few comics have been able to match his ability to make audiences laugh and think.
Due to recent automated spamming attacks on our blogs, we are temporarily requiring commenters to authenticate themselves via TypeKey® before posting comments to any News & Record blog in order to prevent denials of service. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.