I think really good comedians are social science genius’s and I think Charlie Murphy was one of the best. They watch, and they read people and situations very well, and they are able to see humour everywhere.
Charlie Murphy died today of leukemia and my heart hurts. He was a great comedian in so many ways, I hope others will write about him as well. He wrote and acted on Chappelle's Show, among many, many other things.
It’s this video below that brought me to love his genius. It was a time when Cesar Millan was a controversial figure in the dog training world, a world much like the political world, split into 2 camps. One that thinks it’s fine to use force on animals and one that thinks it’s not ok at all.
I’m in that latter camp and early on it was hard to convince even a lot of professionals how cruel Millan’s methods were. I would have clients tell me that they loved the Dog Whisperer show and that the dogs seemed fine.
I invited them to watch the show with the sound off and to watch the dogs. Once away from Millan’s charismatic spell, they saw what I saw, what Charlie Murphy saw, and while I don't know if Charlie Murphy owned dogs, I'm pretty sure he wasn't a dog trainer. Yet he saw.
Eventually the top names in the world of dog training co wrote a letter to National Geographic and a disclaimer was put at the beginning of the show warning people not “to try these methods at home”.
I can tell you that there is nothing I do when I am training a dog that a 12 year old kid can’t do safely at home. I know when a dog is being trained and when he is being threatened and amazingly, way before the hot shot experts waded into the fray, Charlie Murphy did too.