Want to influence Congress? Forget cash — bring jokes.
According to a new book, Eddie Murphy once kept his brother out of a war zone by promising to write quips for then-Sen. Alfonse D’Amato.
Murphy’s comedian brother, Charlie, best known for his work on the Comedy Central hit “Chappelle’s Show,” was a Navy man in the early ’80s and about to be shipped off to “powder-keg Lebanon,” says “Moneywood,” a new book by William Stadiem.
Stadiem writes that Murphy’s then-manager and co-founder of the Comic Strip comedy club, Bob Wachs, “leaned on Senator Al D’Amato . . . to help his constituent, with the quid pro quo that Eddie Murphy write funny material for D’Amato and his fellow Republican Rudy Giuliani.” Charlie Murphy never did make it to Lebanon., and Stadiem writes that after he left the military and became part of his brother’s sizable entourage, “Eddie Murphy would constantly joke that he should have left him in the navy.”
“Senator D’Amato remembers meeting Mr. Murphy’s manager at a comedy show and speaking about Charlie, but he doesn’t recall what, if anything, he did to help Charlie,” said D’Amato’s executive assistant, Dana Sanneman.
Eddie Murphy would not comment, and Charlie Murphy said the story “is not even close to true.”