RIP: Richard Pryor and Eugene J. McCarthy

Former Senator and progressive presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy has died, as has comedian Richard Pryor.

It’s a strange combination, as the two might seem, at first glance, to be such vastly different men. McCarthy was a small-town white kid, who was a professor, a year-long resident of a monastery, a Congressman, a Senator, and a five-time presidential candidate, whose 1968 challenge of sitting president Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War led to Johnson’s withdrawal from the race. Pryor was a small-town black kid, who grew up in a brothel and served in the military before launching a long-term career in the entertainment business as a writer, actor, and hugely influential comedian.

But both of these midwesterners were controversial. Both of them challenged institutionalized ideas at a very tumultuous time in American history. Both of them were prolific writers and found solace in the process. Both of them even made famously bad mistakes in 1980—McCarthy endorsed Reagan; Pryor caught himself on fire while freebasing.

And both of them inspired those that followed to do things they may never have before considered—sometimes to amazing results, and sometimes not—but neither progressive politicians nor subversive comedians can avoid the inevitable comparisons to their respective forebears. Both of these men will be remembered for changing, forevermore, the paths that stretched behind them.

I had some great things and I had some bad things. The best and the worst. In other words, I had a life. — Richard Pryor