Wanda Sykes: I'ma Be Me

Beth McCarthy

BY Robert BellPublished Feb 2, 2010

So, it seems that Wanda Sykes is overjoyed to have a black (biracial) president, since it means that she can dance in public and buy whole watermelons at the grocery store without fear of white people looking at her. She promises that if Barack Obama gets a second term in office, she's going to make a trip to Popeye's to celebrate. Perhaps it's appropriate that Sykes's best material in this hour-and-a-half stand-up special is about the new president, given the controversy she created at the White House correspondents' dinner when she implied that Rush Limbaugh was the 20th 9/11 hijacker. Amusingly, she points out that prior to the dinner, she was pulled aside and told not to say the F-word or the N-word; a request, she presumes, wasn't given to Rich Little when he performed for George Bush the year prior. In addition to her observations about the new president, Sykes discusses coming out of the closet, being a new mother, performing on a gay cruise, getting a bikini wax and 21st century pirates. Where most of the mommy jokes miss, her observations about Somali pirates and naked gay men in line for breakfast on a cruise ship are hilarious. Even her cracks about older men needing notes from women before being allowed a prescription for Viagra — for an ailment she refers to as "broke dick" — prove laugh-out-loud funny. Essentially, the only downfall of this special is how specifically political it is, occasionally dipping into preaching while doling out the laughs. In this sense, the comedian's previous outings were more consistently chuckle-inducing for fans of irreverent, edgy comedy, but anyone that enjoys Wanda Sykes's particular shtick shouldn't care. Where else are people going to hear a grown woman talk about putting icy-hot on her recently waxed vagina, in addition to teaching a male infant how to wipe front-to-back in case he has to wipe her when she's old and incontinent?
(Warner)

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