Phylicia Rashad made history yesterday as the first black woman to win a Tony award for Best Actress. This begs two questions. The second is why hasn't a black actress won a Tony award before now? The first is what is Claire Huxtable doing in a play? We'll completely ignore the second question and concentrate on the first as there's more comedy potential there (trust me, this does pick up in a bit).

Broadway is Phylicia's first love and her notable successes in the silver screen were basically just placeholders in her career as a stage actress. A way to pay the bills you might say. That decade long stretch as the affluent lawyer mom of a gaggle of dark skinned and white souled children was but a diversion. How does one get 'diverted' from the love of their life for such a long time? A year here or there could be understood easily but a decade?

There's only one answer and that is cashola. Moola. Dough. Money. Greenbacks. Hey, you don't get to snort coke off a whore's ass by showing her your playbill, even if you are first billed. Well, not any classy whore anyway. I'm talking high class hookers where your people call somebody who knows somebody who sets things up. And she brings the coke too. That's right, I'm talking F-I-N-E fine.

Hell, you don't even get "people" without serious cash and clout. Yule Brenner WAS the freakin' King and he never had people. Guy danced around bald and half nude for twenty years and all it got him was an aneurysm. Couldn't even beat out Captain Picard for sexiest bald dude. You know why? Because Patrick Stewart was the star of a popular series and he has people. Successful show equals money equals people equals hookers with ass cocaine. It's simple math, folks.

How much was Kramer getting for working on Seinfeld? Something like a million per episode there at the end, right? You think he ever seriously contemplated leaving the show to pursue his dream of being a NASCAR driver? Of course not. You get way more tang as "that loser goof on Seinfeld" than you do as "another redneck wanna-be" in Daytona.

The only person who has ever successfully left a hit series to pursue other interests was Shelley Long. She abandoned Cheers after it became the number one show on television and managed to become a wildly successful screen actress. Oh, wait a second - no she didn't. She played a couple roles as an extra flighty Goldie Hawn impersonator opposite such worthies as Steve Gutenberg in second rate comedies that nobody remembers except the occasional desperate blogger reaching through the depths of the IMDB database. Shortly after noting her dismal failure as a B movie queen, Shelley Long's career shifted focus and she now makes a living by showing up at strange houses with several grams of coke and tear-off panties.

So to sum up, congratulations to Phylicia Rashad for her historical achievement. We're sure that she would have got it much earlier if she hadn't taken such a long sabbatical from the stage and if the assholes who give out the Tony's weren't such racist sons of bitches. Hey, there's a bonus - I answered the second question too.