MASTERS OF THE YO MAMA JOKE
Yo mama jokes have entertained African-Americans for generations. It
has only been within the last twenty years that this form of comedic
entertainment has found its wa y into the mainstream and come to the
attention of those outside the African-American community. This is
largely attributed to one Las Vegas entertainer – George Wallace. This
Atlanta-based comedian sparred with his on-air nemesis, Jay Anthony
Brown, of Columbia, South Carolina, for years on the Tom Joyner Morning
Show, exchanging barbs and entertaining listeners with a barrage of yo
mama jokes. Morning commuters were stopped dead in their tracks, gasping
for breath as the two went at each other with unbridled bravado, hurling
mama jokes back and forth reminiscent of many neighborhood verbal
battles of the 1960s and 1970s and before. Their oratorical skirmishes
were not only entertaining, they were enlightening. Tom Joyner’s
audience, while mostly African-American has always been ho mogenized,
made up of a unique blend of Caucasian, Hispanic, African-American and
every ethnic group that calls the United States home. With the advent of
internet radio, the Tom Joyner Morning Show found an international
audience, and George and Jay’s yo mama jokes travelled around the world
via the internet with the rest of the show. American soldiers stationed
in far reaches around the globe were able to listen in as Jay sat in the
studio and quipped about Mrs. Wide Load Wallace and George shot back
from his Las Vegas perch with side splitting comebacks about Jay’s mama
and her shortcomings. George Wallace and Jay Anthony Brown were, by
far, not even close to inventing the yo mama joke, but they are to be
credited with bringing the genre to the forefront in America as well as
the rest of the world.
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