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Proof That You Should Be Nice To Your Mother-In-Law

By Evil Beet Gossip • on August 26, 2009

Stand-up comedian Shoonda Croonquist — she’s been seen on Comedy Central — is being sued by her mother-in-law. The half-black, half-Swedish, Roman Catholic-raised comic that married a Jew, has built her routine around talking about the cultural clashes in her life.

And she’s not shy about making the in-laws the butt of her jokes.

Take the one about her mother-in-law’s reaction to news she was pregnant with her first child: “OK, now that we know you’re having a little girl I want to know what you’re naming that little tchotchke. Now we don’t want a name that’s difficult to pronounce like Shaniqua. We’re thinking a name short but delicious. Like Hadassah or Goldie.”

Or her first visit to her mother-in-law’s house: “I walk in, I say, ‘Thank you so much for having me here, Ruthie.’ She says, ‘The pleasure’s all mine, have a seat.’” Then, in a loud aside, ‘Harriet, put my pocketbook away.’”

Though Croonquist and her husband are now estranged from his family, it wasn’t always that way; they once loved her routines. ”They played my tape at Passover one year, and they loved it!” The turning point seems to be when she put information on her website that made it easy for people to figure her in-laws’ identities.

Shoonda has stated that she’s willing to change or remove offensive wording from her website, but she won’t pay a settlement. She maintains that she’s not anti-Jewish, especially since she has converted to Judaism and keeps a kosher household. Beyond all, the show must go on.

In the meantime, Croonquist, who lives in Beverly Hills and is a regular on the Hollywood comedy circuit, was at the Laugh Factory on open-mic night recently, eager to test some new non-mother-in-law material. This time the butt of her jokes would be herself, her lawyer husband (his firm is representing her in the lawsuit) and entertainer Jennifer Lopez.

“My father is Swedish, my mother is African-American. You know what that made me growing up?” she asks the audience. “A Puerto Rican! That works for me, honey. … After having two babies in two years, I look like J-Lo.”

Still, she couldn’t resist getting a few yucks out of her in-laws, although this time she left their first names out of the act.

Doing her sister-in-law during their first meeting (and in a New Jersey accent the lawsuit notes Croonquist has said sounds “like a cat in heat”): “Oh my Gawd, look at her, she’s got light eyes and light hair. What kind of black person is she?”

Then herself (in a black urban street voice): “I said, ‘A black person who can hear, that’s who.’”

Then (as Haley Joel Osment might sound in “The Sixth Sense,” if he spoke in a black urban accent): “I hear white people!”

“They’re nice jokes. There’s nothing bad, nothing defamatory,”

It all leads me to ask: Is this free speech? Is it racism? And if it is racist talk, should it be prohibited?