10 Things in Stand-Up Comedy That Should Be Retired

2. The White Guy Voice. The white guy voice is a time honored device of degradation for minority comics to demean white guys. It has been done for a long time (and for me, my favorite spin on it is Dave Chappelle's, which sounds less corny and more super serious), but it is time to go. I made this decision when watching a high profile Latino comic's' Rosetta Stone Spanish lesson, posing as a comedy special on HBO. His special consisted of four things in equal parts: Spanish phrases, telling the difference between Latino families and white families, staring bug-eyed while rubbing the lapel of his suit jacket and doing a white voice circa 1977 comedy. Enough is enough — it is time for a new spin on this one. Retire the old one

5. "Too soon?" I know this one will be tough for a lot of people to let go so I will make a deal. Too soon still gets some laughs when properly applied (Gary Gulman's bit about a gunpowder Abe Lincoln scratch n sniff sticker comes to mind), but I would estimate, based on absolutely no scientific data other than my gut instinct, that 90 percent of jokes that end with a "too soon?" tag are actually written with the too soon in mind. So instead of relying on the strength of the joke, the so-so joke is in place to facilitate a "too soon."

7. Male vs. Female Funny Debate. I have engaged this topic with nuanced vigor to no avail. So I am here to say that I will finally admit that men and women are equally funny and equally capable of being funny. In exchange for this bold concession on my part I would just like all the people who have always supported this idea to admit that there is not a shred of tangible evidence proving the veracity of this statement. Great! So I guess we can stick a fork in this one.

10 Things in Stan Cauvin d-Up Comedy That Should Be Retired / J-L Cauvin / 09/06/2012

Eddie Murphy: The Rolling Stone Interview

Brian Hiatt: You had a great line about showbiz: "You get born only once in this business, but you can die again and again."

Eddie Murphy: I said that? You can die again and again. But I've been making movies for so long that now it's all just one body of work. If you have a flop movie, so what? And if you have a hit movie, it's "so what," too, it's on to the next movie. If I do something and I die in it, at least I took a chance. There's this little box that African-American actors have to work in, in the first place, and I was able to rise above that box. I could have done a bunch of movies where I stayed as the Axel Foley or Reggie Hammond persona. But I didn't want to be doing the same thing all the time. Every now and then, you crash and burn, but that's part of it.

Brian Hiatt: When your career hit its first bumps at the end of the Eighties, people seemed eager to say you were washed up.

Eddie Murphy: You have to remember, there was no hip-hop back then, or hip-hop was still novelty music, and for years I'm the whipping boy. Anybody that wanted to vent, I was the one. I got a lot of shit that wasn't fair. The root of it was racist. If I was rubbing you the wrong way, at the core of it was some racist shit: "Look at this arrogant nigger, two thumbs waaaay down" [laughs]. Then I wasn't helping, either. I wasn't giving no humble pie: "Fuck y'all, suck my dick, motherfucker!"

Eddie Murphy: The Rolling Stone Interview / by: Brian Hiatt / November 9, 2011