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One of his funniest sketches, a parfait of incongruities, is Columbus' discovery of America. Trying to convince Queen Isabella—Queen Isabel Johnson, that is—that she should cough up for the trip west, Columbus tells her that without America, there would be no Ray Charles. That sends her into a swivet. "Ray Charles?" she screeches. "You gonna find Ray Charles? He in America?" "Damn right," says Chris. After writing him out a traveler's check so that he can buy the Pinta, the Niña and the Santa Maria at the Army & Navy Store, a zonked-out Isabel announces to the crowd at the dock: "Chris goin' to America on that boat. Chris goin' to find Ray Charles."
Later, when Chris spots America, a West Indian maiden who could be Geraldine's twin is waiting for him, her hand on her hip and "Watch out" in her eyes. "What the hell you want comin' round in them ships?" she asks. "We don't wanna be discovered. You better discover your ass away from here."
In another travesty of history, Bathsheba is a groupie follower of Little David, a rock singer and harpist. "Play the harp, Little David!" Bathsheba shrieks. "Play on that harp, honey!" Eventually David's prowess with women arouses the ire of Goliath, leader of a motorcycle gang called the Philistines. "Watch out, David!" Bathsheba yells. "You'd better watch out! He runnin' up behind you! He got a club!
Gonna hit you!" Some of the catch phrases in these routines have already become part of the slang of the '70s. The best known is the refrain with which a black minister's wife explains her every goof, whether it is buying an expensive dress or ramming her car into the side of the church: "The devil made me do it."
Some middleclass, well-educated blacks are offended by the updated Amos 'n' Andy quality of Flip's material. Wilson's way of playing with the stereotypes, however, unselfconsciously holds them up to ridicule. Not even Archie Bunker could find much ammunition for bigotry in Flip's presentation of Geraldine (see box, page 59). If Flip is Amos 'n' Andy, he is Amos 'n' Andy in reverse shuffle—with 30 years of civil rights battles behind him.
Most blacks, uneducated as well as sophisticated, seem to realize this. Last year when he appeared at Black Expo '71, a trade and cultural fair in the International Amphitheater in Chicago, the audience was screaming for Geraldine even before Flip came on. "There was such a massive outpouring of love and appreciation that it overwhelmed the cat and broke him down," remembers the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who helped organize the affair.
No Color. To those who say that he should do more to advance the "cause," Flip has a ready reply: "I have feelings about these things, but I'm selling professional entertainment. Politics is for politicians. Each man has his own style; mine is that 'the funny' has no color. I do these characters because they're what I know. But people are just people to me. The way I see it, I don't have to think black—or not think black. I just have to entertain. I'm just a comic."