Bernie Mac: TV father says stop coddling our children - Interview - Cover Story - Biography

Ebony, June, 2003 by Kevin Chappell

HE'S fatherhood's ambassador of tough love, a man who is not scared of you, me or the gaggles of mannish kids out there he unapologetically says make him so mad that "sometimes I want to bust them across the head until the white meat shows."

Indeed, Bernie Mac has become America's favorite dad by saying exactly what's on his mind, things fathers wished they could say, spouting comeuppances that all frustrated fathers fancy in their mind but keep to themselves in favor of child-rearing ideologies that are more politically correct and legal.

In his popular role as stand-up comedian and TV dad on The Bernie Mac Show, the 44-year-old Mac never misses a chance to cut hard-headed children down to size ("All kids want to do is eat candy, stay up late and not go to school. That's what a kid wants to do") and blames society for not following his lead. A father himself, he lives by a few simple rules when it comes to parenting. Children should respect adults, and parents shouldn't let their kids walk all over them.

In a one-on-one interview, Mac stresses that parenting is not about being best friends with a child. He is a firm believer that parents coddle children too much, spare the rod too often. "They coddle them. They lie for them. They co-sign for them. Parents cover for their kids, even when their kids are dead wrong. And that's where the problems come in," he says. "They always say they want to give their kids more than what they had. But sometimes more is not always better. Teachers quit because they can't teach these bad kids. Police officers can't patrol the streets anymore.

"We've dropped the ball," Mac continues. "One thing we had [when we were kids] was respect for our elders. No matter what we did, we respected our elders, and we told the truth." (In fact, Mae recently turned down an invitation to dinner at the White House because he said he wasn't raised to be a good liar, even to the President.)

It's his brutal honesty that has turned his sitcom, The Bernie Mac Show, into one of the biggest hits on television. Watched by more than 10 million viewers each week, the show follows the joys and pains of Mac and his executive wife (Kellita Smith), who are thrust into parenthood when they take custody of his drug-addicted sister's three kids: Bryanna (Dee Dee Davis), Jordan (Jeremy Suarez) and Vanessa (Camille Winbush).

The flip side of legendary family man Bill Cosby, who made television history as an accommodating father who was always in control of his family, Mac (whose real name is Bernard Jeffery McCullough) represents the evolution of the loving but frustrated father. To Mac, parenting is warfare. It's adult versus kid, old versus young, wise versus naive. Who wins the battle many times boils down to who's the craziest, who scares whom into capitulation, who waves the white flag first. "When I say I want to kill kids, you know what I mean. I don't have to explain," he says. "I just say what [fathers] want to say, but can't. That's all right. I'm the bad guy. I'll be the bad guy."

Praised for transcending race and class, the show is based on the six years Mac raised his nieces and nephews in real life, as well as the experience of a family friend who did the same. The show has been picked up for another season. He says the parental wisdom that forms the basis of the show's plot each week actually comes from his upbringing on Chicago's South Side, where he was raised by a hard-nosed single mother and straight-talking grandmother. "What you're seeing on TV is my grandma," he says. "I just say what she told me, except I do it in a comedic form."

Mac says he got whippings every day when he was growing up. He was disciplined not so much for being disrespectful, but for doing crazy things to get laughs. "Sometimes I got two or three in one day," he says. "I got whipped so much that I became immune to the pain. I could take the pain. I did things for laughs. It didn't matter at what price--I wanted to make you laugh."

He says it wasn't until his mother, Mary, died from breast cancer when he was in high school, and his grandmother, Lorraine, took a more active role in raising him, that he became serious about anything. It was during that time that he and his two brothers lived in a house with a dozen or so other relatives. Instead of letting his situation destroy him, Mac excelled. "After my mother died, my grades came up. I got myself together mentally. I was more serious, more dedicated," he says. "My grandmother was always in my ear. She would always ask me about my day. And she always made me look at her in her eyes. At the time, I thought she was hard and cold. My grandma was a fan of the truth. She just told it like it was. I could always go to her with anything. The two most powerful people in my life weren't men. They were women--my grandmother and my mother. My grandmother taught me more than anybody in my life. Grandmothers like that no longer exist.

"Grandmothers now are 34, and got more drama than their grandkids," he adds jokingly.