You gave me much more pleasure and honesty than Tony Snow, Tim Russert, and some of the others RIP'd here I must say.
Comedian-actor Bernie Mac died early Saturday morning from complications due to pneumonia, his publicist has confirmed. Mac had been admitted to Chicago's Northwestern Memorial hospital on Aug. 1, but had been expected to recover. The 50-year-old actor had battled sarcoidosis, a chronic disorder that can cause inflammation in the lungs. He spoke about his battle with the disease in 2005, after production was halted on his sitcom, The Bernie Mac Show, delaying its season premiere by more than two months. Mac is best remembered for five seasons of that series, for which he earned two Emmy and two Golden Globe nominations. It debuted in 2001, a year after the Spike Lee-directed concert film The Original Kings of Comedy introduced a wider audience to the stand-up routines of tour mates Mac, Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, and Cedric the Entertainer. Mac had been a working comedian for 31 years.
Link: sigh...
Small, Mac-ish update:
Bernard Jeffrey McCullough was born in Chicago to a single mother who inspired him to become a comedian. He told a television interviewer in 2001 that when he was 5, he saw his mother sitting in front of the television set crying. “The Ed Sullivan Show” was playing, and Bill Cosby was on the show. When Mr. Cosby began telling a story about snakes in a bathroom, she started laughing despite herself. “When I saw her laughing, I told her that I was going to be a comedian so she’d never cry again,” Mr. Mac said.
His mother died of cancer when he was 16, and he was raised by his grandmother on the South Side of Chicago. His two brothers also died, one in infancy, the other of a heart attack in his 20s.
At the Chicago Vocational Career Academy, Mr. Mac was voted class clown by his graduating class. But already serious about his intended profession, he turned down the honor. “I said, ‘I’m funny. I’m a comedian. I’m not a clown,’” he later recalled. “My humor had changed from foolishness to making sense.”
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After high school, Mr. Mac worked as a janitor, a mover and a school bus driver before finding a job at a General Motors plant. In 1976, he married his high school sweetheart, Rhonda. He is survived by his wife; a daughter, Je’Niece; and a granddaughter.
Desperate to become a comedian, Mr. Mac told jokes for tips on the Chicago subway and performed at comedy clubs, many of them off the beaten track. “When I started in the clubs, I had to work places where didn’t nobody else want to work,” he told The Washington Post. “I had to do clubs where street gangs were, had to do motorcycle gangs, gay balls and things of that nature.”
NYT (my emphasis)
What more can be said?