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MORE REACTION TO MOONEY’S DIANA DISS: Underwood, Harvey weigh in on situation; bit may be left on editing room floor forever.

E-mail to a friend | Printer friendly (September 27, 2005)

*It’s hard to say how much of Sunday night’s BET Comedy Awards will actually make it on the air tonight at 9 p.m. As previously reported, there were more “n*****s,” “b***es” and “m*ther f***as” spat out that night at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium than in the entire career of NWA. But at no point in the evening did it get any lower on the class meter than when comedian Paul Mooney verbally eviscerated Diana Ross… as her daughter, Tracee Ellis Ross, sat in the audience.


You know you done messed up when Sheryl Underwood thinks you went too far.


“I’ma tell you something. I’m from Arkansas. You talk about my mama, I’ma run up on the stage and whup ya ass. That’s all there is to it,” Underwood told reporters backstage. “You can’t say nothin’ ‘bout nobody in my family; you can’t say nothin’ ‘bout my step-mama, my pretend mama, my big mamas, my play mamas. You can’t even say nothing about somebody who look like my mama.”


Mooney’s Diana Ross bit may not ever see the light of day. A source backstage overheard Tracee’s publicist angrily dress down BET staff, who in turn reassured her that the segment would be edited out of tonight’s telecast.


“I’m not sure what the producers are going to do where that’s concerned,” BET publicist Michael Llewellen admitted to reporters in the press room. “If it came across as much of a grenade [to producers] as it did [based on] some of the expressions I saw on your faces in here, I’m sure they’ll edit it.”


Mooney not only mocked Diana Ross’ drunk driving arrest, (an incident that happened nearly three years ago), but he also made fun of the Jan. 2004 mountain climbing death of Ross’ husband and Tracee’s step-father, Arne Naess Jr. The bit was part of Mooney’s “Nigga Wake Up Awards” comedy routine, which last year targeted Michael Jackson.


Tracee, a star of UPN’s “Girlfriends,” left the auditorium during the segment. Host Steve Harvey, who feels Mooney has a right to say whatever he wants to say, later approached the actress in a show of support.

“I was just letting Tracee Ross know that all of us love her and her mother,” Harvey told reporters backstage. “Paul Mooney did the thing about her mother getting that [Nigga Wake Up] award and then made that joke about her father disappearing on the mountain. This girl had lost her step-father in a mountain-climbing accident, and her mama is Diana Ross. Sh*t. That’s big love, Diana Ross. I just felt like since she was sitting out there, just let the audience give her some love. Comedy shouldn’t be f*cked up like that, especially at the expense of some people sitting there. You gotta let that weight up off her. The crowd wasn’t laughing at that, either.”

Meanwhile, other things did happen during the telecast. Martin Lawrence received the show’s prestigious 2005 Comedy Icon Award for his “outstanding body of work.”

“It’s a wonderful honor. I can’t believe it’s me they honored tonight like that, but I’ll take it,” he said backstage.