Jackie Mason, the stand-up comic whose career spanned several decades and became a template and poster child of sorts for Jewish self-deprecation, died Saturday at the age of 93. His friend, lawyer Raoul Felder, confirmed Mason’s death to the New York Times.
“My humor — it’s a man in a conversation, pointing things out to you,” he told the Times in 1988. “He’s not better than you, he’s just another guy. I see life with love — I’m your brother up there — but if I see you make a fool out of yourself, I owe it to you to point that out to you.”
Mason built his career out of political incorrectness, with his unique innuendo-laden style earning him a spot on Comedy Central’s 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time. A former rabbi who resigned to become a stand-up comic — “Somebody in the family had to make a living,” he once said — Mason began his comedic career in the mid-1950s appearing throughout New York nightclubs before expanding his audience via national appearances on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show.
Mason’s career spiked in the 1980s thanks to the popular Broadway show The World According to Me and his appearance as the obnoxious Jack Hartounian in Caddyshack II. He returned to Broadway in 1990 with his new show Brand New and, two years later, won an Emmy for his role of Hyman Krustofsky, the disappointed father of Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky, aka Krusty the Clown, on The Simpsons. (Mason would return to the role in three subsequent episodes.)
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