Good advice Bill D. But I would maintain that it is possible to transcend the man's politics (or ignore them completely) and still think they guy wasn't funny. There were many other comedians of the eras that Bob Hope spanned I found much funnier, including Mort Sahl, Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Bill Cosby, Woodie Allen, Lenny Bruce, the Marx Bros, Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, and so many others. People forget that Bob Hope pushed a lot of products for advertisers over the years. His Christmas shows were on the air for nearly 20 years, he hosted the Oscars for about 15 years, had The Bob Hope Special for decades.

It is easy to be nostalgic about someone who hasn't been in our living rooms since our childhood, when he was a regular fixture, and who died at the ripe old age of 100. Yet, despite his popularity, and appearing in over 50 movies, he wasn't often recognized with awards, etc. by his contemporaries, who didn't find him very worthy of special recognition for his acting or his comedy. The only thing he was generally recognized for was his service to the troops, hence his Emmy award during the height of the Vietnam War (when his shows became very controversial, because they were underwritten by Uncle Sam, which made him a filthy rich man), as an in-yer-face gesture to the anti-war movement from the Hollywood right. Once peace time hit in the 70s, it was Bob Hope and Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, profound cynicism, stale, recycled, regurgitated "one liner" crap. He was also a notorious womanizer

One other thing--just because the racism, chauvism, is of another era, it doesn't mean his humor and the stereotypes in his films didn't hurt the people it was directed towards any less, who lived through the era right along with him. So that "it was a different era" argument, to me, is disingenuous. There were people in that era too, opposing racism, chauvinism, etc. as best they knew how. Bob Hope wasn't among them. To suggest that his television specials from Vietnam, which many of us grew up on, were somehow enlightened comedy, is revisionist history. Ditto with his TV shows.