Obama chides comedian

Comedian Bernie Mac encountered some heckling and a campaign rebuke during a surprise appearance Friday night at a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Toward the end of a 10-minute stand-up routine at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Chicago, the 50-year-old star of “The Bernie Mac Show” joked about menopause, sexual infidelity and promiscuity, and occasionally used crude language.

“My little nephew came to me and he said, ‘Uncle, what’s the difference between a hypothetical question and a realistic question?’ ” Mac said. “I said, ‘I don’t know, but,’ I said, ‘go upstairs and ask your mother if she’d make love to the mailman for $50,000.’ ”

As the joke continued, the punch line evoked an angry response from at least one person in the audience, who said it was offensive to women.

“It’s not funny. Let’s get Barack on,” a man shouted from the crowd of people who had paid $2,300 each to support the Illinois senator.

About 15 minutes later, Obama tried to smooth things over with a joke of his own.

“We can’t afford to be divided by race. We can’t afford to be divided by region or by class, and we can’t afford to be divided by gender, which, by the way, that means, Bernie, you’ve got to clean up your act next time,” Obama said. “This is a family affair. By the way, I’m just messing with you, man.”

The incident later drew a response from Obama’s campaign, which criticized Mac’s material.

“Sen. Obama told Bernie Mac that he doesn’t condone these statements and believes what was said was inappropriate,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement after the event.

Mac, a Chicago native, described himself as a longtime Obama supporter and called the presumptive Democratic nominee a “man’s man” while offering him advice for the remainder of the campaign trail.

“People like rumors. They’re going to say things like ‘You was at the club with Lil’ Kim, and you and Kanye West got into a fistfight,’ ” he said. “You can’t get upset. You’ve got to keep hope alive.”

Mac’s appearance was Obama’s first celebrity event of the evening.

Later at a Lincoln Park nightclub, Obama spoke to a raucous crowd of music fans, who paid up to $500 a person to see a performance by Wilco lead singer Jeff Tweedy and two other band members.