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Best Of The Boondocks: Aaron McGruder's Deadliest Character Assassinations

Lenny Kravitz, Grace Jones, Lauryn Hill, Lion Babe, Thundercat, SZA & More Rock The Afropunk Festival 2015 in Brooklyn, NY.

The Boondocks' bittersweet Aaron McGruder-less resurgence is upon us, and that means it's time to run through the slew of unabashed character slayings that his program has time and time again provided us with. From Oprah to Usher and BET to the GOP, included here is the full roster of The Boondock's pop culture dismemberments. All fury, no punches pulled. You can peep all of these iconoclastic moments after the jump but stay tuned, as the highly anticipated fourth season of The Boondocks takes off tonight on Adult Swim, for better or for worse.

1. Ronald Reagan

What better way to jump off the most irreverent animated series in the history of television than an all-out assault on the GOP and the vestiges of Reagan's America? In the first 30 seconds of the show's premiere, Huey --who is not a prophet-- lets loose an out-right barrage at "The Garden Party," claiming "Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying about 9/11." A perfect start to McGruder's masterpiece.

2. R. Kelly

In the follow up to a monumental premiere, the very next episode tackled one of hip-hop's most blown-up debacles, none other than "The Trial Of R(obert) Kelly." While the episode itself is more a statement on the 'blind leading the blind' mentality of hip-hop's culture at the time, attacking acute ignorance in the community with Riley taking the side of Kelly and Huey taking that of the prosecution. The commentary perfectly addresses Kells' riding the wave of his loyal subject's ignorance to a "not guilty" verdict from a Chicago jury. Pure and utter fvckery.

3. Ann Coulter

While McGruder certainly doesn't empathize with GOP media queen, he does an excellent job of harnessing Huey's sharp prose to break down her role in Conservative media machine. Coulter's spectacle-based media ring is put on blast as she is reduced to the attention-hungry media monger we all know her as, defending a teacher who used the n-word in an exchange with Riley. Gettin' that redneck money.

4. BET

In the show's most deliberate attack, McGruder turned his keen mind to the alleged cultural pollution being propagated by BET, painting its newly appointed VP Debra L. Lee as a makeshift Dr. Evil, intent to "accomplish what hundreds of years of slavery, Jim Crow and malt liquor couldn't." In an episode that was banned from airing in the US due to it's salacious nature, Huey goes on a Mahatma-inspired hunger strike until "the tyranny of BET came to an end" and with the "help" of Rev. Rollo Goodlove (Cee-lo) almost has his way.

5. Usher

The Atlanta-bred crooner was simply devastated by McGruder's pen, chalking his appeal up to his posing steez, "borrowing" moves from MJ and implementing Kells' knack for the melodramatic in a white lady-friendly package (OK, "Caught Up" is that jam, but lets be real. After that one prom, it's possible we were past the "climax."). If it wasn't for some relationship counseling from A Pimp Named Slick Back, Tom would have gotten his lady took by a crooning has-been.

6. Oprah

"Oprah Winfrey taps directly into the emotions, beliefs, buying habits and summer reading patterns of billions of women all over the world! Oprah Winfrey has the power to lay waste an entire industry with a mere utterance! She's a completely invincible, unstoppable force of nature and with her under our control nobody would be able to stop us."

Alright, so this one isn't so much an attack on Oprah as it is a dissertation on how pervasive the talk-show host/entrepreneur/philanthropist/super-woman's influence is on the American stay-at-home mom. However, in yet another important exposition on the ignorance plaguing the hip-hop community in the mid-2000s, Ed Wuncler & Gin Rummy (Charlie Murphy & Samuel L Jackson) kidnap Maya Angelou in a case of mistaken indentity, cause you know, "they both got books and shit."

7. 50 Cent

In one of the several attacks on Curtis (just peep any of the "Thugnificent" episodes) McGruder dissects the shallow presence of the several-times-shot rapper in the vast pool of crossover performers with another perfectly executed commentary on the lack of culturally enriching programming pushed to the masses. His parody of the stoner-friendly but wildly terrible Soul Plane reminds us that some artists simply aren't cut out for that double, sometimes triple life. And lets be honest; wouldn't we rather see Fiddy stick to that rigorous Vitamin Water regiment than be subjected to another one of his hardened street hustler/cop roles?

8. Tyler Perry

For my money, the single worst thing to come out of Hollywood in the last 7 years would be the nearly 2 centuries worth of material that's been plowed out by this half-assed Eddie Murphyalike.The episode puts forth some of the most pertinent commentary on the lack  of compelling black characters in contemporary film this side of the Wayans dynasty. McGruder tactfully disassembles the Perry film theory in a way that made me literally drool from hilarity. Cause lets be honest, there's only one Ma Dukes, and she sure as shit ain't no Klump.