It's always a shame when we lose a smart, funny man. Paul Mooney was a smart, funny man. You'd have to be to be best friends with (and an occasional writer for) Richard Pryor. Paul's own stand-up act was also a masterwork of comedy. A lot of it was about race but a lot of it wasn't. It deserved a lot more attention than it got.
We worked together a couple of times…even got nominated together for an Emmy which we didn't win. We were beaten by Mister Rogers and every time I ran into Paul after that, he had a new theory about how it was all rigged and we really won. It sounded like Donald Trump explaining these days how he really won the 2020 election except that Paul was kidding and Paul was funny. And like me, he thought losing to Mister Rogers was kind of a nice, funny way to lose.
I didn't see him at all for the last ten-or-so years and I don't think many people did. We heard he was not well and that his performing career was probably over. Very sad. And it was very sad to hear that he died this morning from a heart attack. He was 79. And like I said, he was a smart, funny man and it's always a shame to lose one of those.