Bad Chappelle Bits

May, that was the most recent ep so there's nothing for you to have seen since. Give it another shot though b/c that is far from the best this season.

Dave singing "Diff'rent Strokes" was great because at the end of the song he said "I was the Gooch."

btw Dave Chappelle rocks and you r all gay for even having the privilege of selecting bits that don't quite work :(

Definitely. Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories deserves a full series (with Chappelle in it of course). I'm sure they could get an entire season out of Rick James alone...

(anyone who han't seen them, this nice person has DivX copies to DL)

It was not long enough.

and yeah an hour is needed.

now lets not exclude everyday conversation with this, either.

its only funny when I do it, anyways.

that last bit was pretty good.

I like that! :-)

I'm a fan of the show but regularly tune in. Chappelle is my all time favorite racist, for Half Baked alone. Genius.

I always laugh out loud at at least ONE thing in the show. The only other thing that makes me laugh out loud without fail is The Onion.

and I hope you're joking about the "racist" bit.

But the puppets had me rolling. Maybe it's juvenile, the show is weakest when he holds back on the offensive content.

"I get so much puppet ass..."

I liked the skits earlier in this season when he had the stockbroker treated like a crack dealer and vice versa.

you can listen to the shit all day long to get it out of your system

Amazon has 'em listed.

as is "ASS MILK"

Mr. Chappelle, can you please get rid of the musical guest slot? If it was an hour show, I would understand that you might have trouble coming up with enough material. But christ it's only like 10 minutes of actual comedy per episode. Get off your stoned ass and write some more sketches.

Also, I am in platonic man-love with the "I'm rich, beeeotch" / Ashy Larry guy.

THAT GUY'S THE BADDEST MUFFUKKA I EVER SEEN

hahaha yeah. I noticed him shaking in the preceding clip, and was already laughing while Dave was describing it. Charlie Murphy is just classic.

You're crazy. IV drug use by puppets is always classic.

"I DONT NEED YOU HONEY,CUZ I BEAT MY DICK LIKE IT OWES ME MONEY"

THATS PRICELESS!!!!

"a Coalition, you ask? Uh, uh, we got Afrika Bambaataa & the Zulu Nation, uhm, Stankonia will be dropping bombs over Baghdad..."

The segregated toilet sketch was cringe-inducing. But maybe I'm just not into shit humor.

Black Bush was genius, one of my favorites of the season.

i'd love to have a chappelle/doggy fizzle marathon. who's down?

I think maybe he's trying too hard to fit in a funny catchphrase for each sketch, since that's what has been most popular. Sometimes it works ("Is Wayne Brady gonna have to choke a bitch?")

I was watching some of the S1 DVDs, and noticed that the episode with the pretty white girl singing Dave's thoughts had basically the same homophobic statement that ILM gave 50 Cent a 300-post thread for.

I didn't really get what Mooney's problem with the drug deal scene in "The Godfather" is.

A local sportsradio/TV anchorman personality told a story about going out to the first football game at a local university two weeks ago and having a group of frat boys start yelling for his attention with "Yo, nigga!" etc. (trying to be cool). He couldn't believe a bunch of white kids at an expensive private university would even think about yelling that in public, much less at a black man - and blamed it on them watching too many Chappelle Shows.

*on cellphone*
"Honey, you'll never guess whose dick is on my shoulder!"

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117922148?cs=1&s=h&p=0

According to a conversation between the [someone playing a key role on the show] and [someone else affiliated with someone on the show], Dave Chappelle has completely gone off his rocker. He is basically AWOL and in need of some serious psychological help. I don’t mean this figuratively. Kiss the season goodbye, and most likely Chappelle will be sued for breach of contract. The guy is just acting nuts right now.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7773670/site/newsweek/

"hit laffer?" awful, awful, awful.

(chapelle not being right, that's awful too.)

Way late on this, but I saw the Pixies sketch for the first time last night (it was airing on syndication on like TBS or something which is kinda telling about the difference 5 years can make). Anyway, very funny but I totally got why Chappelle was horrified by the bit and maybe about how he had this new perspective on all his work. Certainly if you're coming to the work with a little distance, and some irony, the sketches aren't necessarily racist (the idea that everyone has insecurities about their own racial stereotypes is a fine observation and can lead to a really funny sketch), but I can totally see how a lot of his work is almost nihilistically using racial caricatures + themes for the lulz -- and I can totally get Chappelle freaking out as he imagines that a huge amount of his fanbase is being titillated by the guy singing in blackface, and not by the observation that accompanies the depiction. (Or, as someone pointed out to me that I thought was a great point -- images are really powerful and they're hard to pin down. Something that might not carry any of this baggage in stand-up can start to drag a lot of baggage behind it when the image is right there in front of you.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EipXbCV3hhA

i meant to post something about Wu-Tang torture. It seems so weird to me for like the most popular sketch show on earth to be expecting everyone in their audience to know what happens in an A NON-SINGLE ALBUM TRACK on an an album that only went one-time platinum. It would be like doing a skit about a deep cut on Pearl Jam's No Code

A) The sketch makes no sense unless you're intimately familiar with the Wu track

B) If you ARE intimately familiar with the Wu track, you know every single line of dialogue before it comes. So I have no idea why the audience keeps laughing like he's surprising them with jokes.

because that's how comedy works? even if you know what's coming, the anticipation + payoff is what's funny

but otherwise i agree

comedy is about defying people's expectations iirc.

otherwise it's just sharing an in-joke?

Sometimes the expected can be unexpected.

A) if you don't know the sketch you've got Dave Chappelle describing crazy ass scenarios involving rappers in a ridiculous voice B) if you know the sketch you may lol at hearing it described as an actual event (which, i, for one, did)

by "sketch" i mean "skit" obv

A) That's not a joke, though
B) I guess. But then it's really a funny PREMISE with no real payoff, but that's just me

of all people to complain about a sketch show celebrating one of the more memorable skits in rap history I wouldn't expect it to be you, Whiney

also between "comedy is about defying expectations" and "that's not a joke" I think you may have more rules about what's allowed to make you laugh than some

tbh if i had a sketch comedy show on comedy central that was as well loved as his show, i might devote one minute of my airtime to a sketch about a rap in joke

it wasn't like he had a two hour special about rap skits

it's about the recontextualization imo.

im not saying it's genius but ya sometimes just reciting something like that matter-of-factly is funny

that's what's unexpected about it

the fact that it is being reported on a news show

Right, I def agree the idea/premise is funny! But its like one joke with a 90 second punchline. And everyone in the audience is laughing like it's 7 or 8 jokes!

well... you know that laughter on tv comedy shows isn't necc totally spontaneous right

and also

i kinda laughed a few times

throughout the skit

as the lines kept coming

s1ock, do u smoke the pot?

i mean, when you first saw it, did you just give one loud bark-like laugh when the premise registered and then sit stone-faced through the rest of the skit?

ahahaha, that's essentially what happened

hahahaha

At least the most recent time i saw it, that's the gist of my emotional range during the sketch, yes

the news dude character in that sketch is really frightening looking. like there is some chilling uncanny going on with Chappelle's whitefacing in that sketch.

It's probably just unconscious associations with Powder

I've been devouring Chappelle stuff for the last coupla months, it's like an addiction. I've scoured torrent sites for illegal mobile phone footage. What's happening to me? Some things I've noticed:

- Mid-to-late 90s he was unrecognizable as the comedian we know now. He was dressing in smart jackets, clean-shaven, and doing a stylized patter with almost vaudeville timing - it was very fast-paced, and very detailed in its mugging and physicality. The guy was seriously close to Jim Carrey at times, physically speaking (and I mean that as a compliment)

- Something changed. From what I've read, his dad died around 1998 or so. Maybe that was it. But something changed. He relaxed. He just became "real". Maybe he discovered weed, I don't know.

- He used to lean on a lot of bits. Some bits he kept for years. ("I don't call the cops. My place is too nice. It's not THAT nice, but it's too nice for me. They'd come in, be like 'the ni**er's still here!'" .. or "I was suspended from school 23 times. In February.")

- He seems now to have reached the point where he can say literally almost anything and people will just die. Which must be a weird feeling as a comedian. I mean it must be a NICE feeling, but you kind of have to wonder if you're getting the right feedback. (Steve Martin at his peak was like this)

- Feels like it's time for a new HBO special

gah wrong thread. Whatever.

As far as the Chappelle show went, I agree that a half hour was too short. There was always something a little rushed feeling about it. He's intro a sketch and just about the point when you thought the jokes were going to come in, he'd point at the screen and the tape would roll. Still, an hour sketch show of that quality would be almost impossible to do. Maybe have a second musical number? A guest? I dunno.

Anyway, Louis C.K. and Chappelle are both guys who can put their standup thoughts into little films. Nobody else I can think of is very good at it. They should form a supergroup. Maybe remake Pootie Tang.

asking one guy to carry a half-hour show and co-write and star in almost every sketch is a lot of work, saying it should've been an hour long is kinda crazy. the host intro stuff did tend to be a bit perfunctory but it's not like it was the only good sketch show that had weak bumpers/framing devices.

No, I agree completely! That's why I said "an hour sketch show of that quality would be almost impossible to do."

I was just throwin shit out there.. like, one more sketch plus another musical number and an interview might carry it through. But it's all fantasy bullshit, the show is not coming back. I'd just like Chappelle to do another big standup special, maybe. All these mobile phone bootlegs suck

it'll be interesting to see what his next 'major project' is, since Block Party was shot while the show was still on the air and since then he's pretty much just done stand-up...like will he do an HBO special, or write a movie, or do another sketch show or a narrative show, cable or network, etc. seems like he's got a lot of options and maybe he's just taking his time and weighing them.

IMO Chappelle's stand up is incredible, funnier for me than the show was. I'm not sure if I liked the show so much because the premises or the writing was funny or if it was because the acting was done so well. Chappelle/Chalie Murphy/Ashy Larry were great in nearly every sketch. One thing I noticed though is that there are an awful lot of references to 2003/04 pop culture which really date the show more than I would like (compare say, mid-90's Simpsons to The Critic)

weed selling baby bit is still one of my favorite things ever

I kinda don't expect him to do anything major ever again tbh

xp

He's crazy now, isn't he?

I have def always liked his stand up better than the show although it too had its good points

how is he crazy?

He's crazy now, isn't he?

or the opposite, just a normal dude living life and thinking about things

so there's this chappelle twitter that thousands of ppl follow & i see it RT'd every so often but it's such a bad impersonation that i don't even know how it exists, it bothers me so much

yea, the "Soy Rick James, puta!" was a dead giveaway....

so there's this chappelle twitter that thousands of ppl follow & i see it RT'd every so often but it's such a bad impersonation that i don't even know how it exists, it bothers me so much

― J0rdan S., Monday, February 7, 2011 4:54 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark

the one hilarious thing about that is when Katt Williams fell for it and had twitter beef with the fake Chappelle

cocaine is a helluva drug

what did the five fingers say to the face?

or the opposite, just a normal dude living life and thinking about things

i get the impression he's seen through the myth of "ambition". he touched huge stardom, didn't like the baggage that came with it, and is now investing his time and energy in the stuff of life he actually enjoys. would love him to do something new though, i do think he's a genius.

seems like everything would be set up for him to just return to the stage right? doesn't have to deal w/ bullshit, gets 'back to his roots', the shows would obv sell out in no time & he could tape a special

tho obv who knows what he's been working on, if anything, while he's been away

he has kids right?

it sucks that he left -- he was such a massive deal to ppl my age, now the most influential comedic voice of the past 5 years is like michael scott or some shit

apparently he has a part in this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Heist tho it looks like a small one

it sucks that he left

agreed. but i respect that he did. that actor's studio he did is fascinating to watch - he's clearly got a strong intellectual handle on why he quit, but at the same time he's evidently emotionally burned by the experience. he's great because he really cares about what he does, its effect, its power. that sensitivity to details is partof why he's so funny, and i guess why he couldn't ignore the problematic nuances of the chappelle show, and the fanbase it discovered, and how selectively they interpreted his message.

Well he still does standup. I have the shitty 3-minute cameraphone videos to prove it. He hasn't "gone away", he just isn't appearing on television.

yeah he's done a huuuuuuuuge amount of standup the past few years, just in comedy clubs and not big theaters or tapings for cable specials or anything that would amount to a a really public outing for someone of his level of fame.

he popped up on larry sanders season five as a cranky star

he has kids right?

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, February 8, 2011 3:38 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah and he lives on a massive farm in like rural kansas or something

ohio

he popped up on larry sanders season five as a cranky star

Wasn't he playing himself? or maybe you meant that

well he wasn't really a 'star' in 1998 so he was probably playing a pretty fictionalized version of himself

Well everybody on Sanders played a pretty fictionalized version of themselves. I hope.

weed selling baby bit is still one of my favorite things ever

"I snuck into the club!"

hahah yes! the thong contest! so good.

You see a lot of his town and the ppl in it in Block Party.

RE the crazy comment yesterday - I thought he had a huge breakdown and went into rehab or something in S. Africa and I hadn't heard much about him since. or the opposite, just a normal dude living life and thinking about things That makes sense though and I hope it's the case although I do wish he'd do something again.

He didn't go crazy, he wasn't on drugs, there was no rehab, he just walked away. It's rare, but you have to admit it's a sane reaction to an insane situation.

i think the "crazy" stuff was gossip to fill in the lack of info. that or the fact that he walked out of a (supposedly) $50m contract. he was on conan or something a few months after he got back from africa and he was like "my wife wasn't too happy about me not gettin that money.. it was like purple rain at my house. i know what it sounds like when doves cry."

lol

lol

It's rare, but you have to admit it's a sane reaction to an insane situation.

Absolutely.

yeah i think a lot of the stigma and speculation around what Chappelle did remains because when he has talked about it, it's been with humor in standup or on talk shows and not bearing his soul and crying to Oprah or Barbara Walters or something

I have no idea how you could watch the Inside the Actor's Studio interview and decide he was just a "guy who walked away," though. Did we all see the same one? He went on a paranoid rant about how the television/hollywood complex wants to tell you that you have issues, that you need to see a therapist, and implied that therapists were going to force you on drugs or brainwash you.

I mean, there's kind of the issue that he was being prodded into it due to wanting to leave and most of the people involved had some financial interest in keeping him in the business so it's hard to tell what's what, but he really did sound like he'd been smoking too much weed.

I haven't seen it. Going to see if I can find it online tonight.

Yeah, I haven't seen that, either. Will check.

yeah he actually is crazy, sorry

pretty sure he DID go on oprah, actually

implied that therapists were going to force you on drugs or brainwash you.

i don't recall this at all. thought he was a real calm, funny, centered dude in that interview

oh yeah damn forgot about the oprah interview

still love this movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsYEHTyLbeE

What is that from? Half baked? I haven't seen it since I saw it in the theater but at the time I remember thinking it was hysterical.

yeah half baked

Half Baked is hilarious

poll idea: half baked v. how high

never seen how high

must see

never did see block party, is that good then

How High is terrible

block party is a good time imo

yeah i don't really fuck w/ How High, and i even saw that in the theater.

block party is real nice, it's a concert film tho but there are a lot of bits around it with him putting it together etc

He's still floating about. Check the brouhaha that happened when he leaked that he was going to show up in Portland in Pioneer Square like two summers ago, and appeared at 12:30 on a Tuesday night.

yeah he's done some standup appearances. keepin a pretty low profile though

As far as the Chappelle show went, I agree that a half hour was too short.

the show was about 16 minutes on Australian TV (ie without ad breaks) - a full half-hour would have been fine.

has he really been doing a "huge" amount of stand up? i know that he had popped up a few places, but it's not like he's been on a tour or anything right?

well he seems to do a lot of unannounced stuff, so yeah no full-scale tour but afaict it's been a pretty significant number of performances over the past few years, not just a handful here or there (talking probably dozens, not hundreds or anything obv). plus his performances have often been like 3+ hours long.

This is amazing.

According to numerous sources, Chappelle stopped his show after telling a single opening joke to complain about people filming him from the front row. And according to an eyewitness account by CNN reporter Roland S. Martin, he then proceeded to spend the next 45 minutes just sort of standing around awkwardly—“sighing audibly” and occasionally checking his text messages—as the audience grew restless and began booing him.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/dave-chappelle-tells-single-joke-then-stands-on-st,59424/

He's cray cray. ;_;

man, i almost went to that thing

on the one hand, dave prob shouldn't be so crazy about ppl filming him in this day & age. on the other hand, what kind of fucking asshole ruins a rare dave chappelle set by refusing to stop filming him from the front row?

surprising the organizers of the show allow taping

some footage (ironically):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkXFwQtjN0E

Audience should have beat the living fuck out of that guy, tbh

imagine he's protected by bouncers

imagine most people aren't savages too

it's not as if he showed up at a concert and stood in the audience playing harmonica or something

I can say with all certainty, that if some cumloaf was holding up a show that I paid money to see; there would def be some point within 46 minutes wherein I wouldn't think twice about wrenching the camera from his herpes-caked hands

you know the guy?

i know his type

he knows people with herpes

Whiney's tight with the herpes infected cumloaf crowd.

Statistically, we all are

this is some unprofessional and stupid behavior and it's kinda sad. you work this shit out in your contract: if there's no filming for real, you have security bounce the guy with the camera and everybody else realizes you're serious. otherwise, you signed to play the gig and people were charged. do your fucking set.

OTM

next show he does the audience should conspire to just sit there, sigh, and check their texts the whole time he's on stage.

"I hope all the bad things in life happen to you and nobody else!"

I find him really overrated; some amusing ideas, but really doesn't know when to end a joke.

theres bootleg audio out there of his dallas set from a few weeks ago

Oh wait, I wanted to post that quote in a best-of thread

I'm rewatching all of the Chapelle Show right now (actually it's literally on at this v moment) and I guess I wasn't paying attention the first time around because I had no idea that Rick James coined the whole cocaine is a helluva drug thing. Watched a couple eps this morning and was dying at the Lil Jon stuff.

Kingfish: Dave Chappelle - "Killin' 'Em Softly"

I saw Dave Chappelle perform back in 2015, which, if my math is correct, was six years ago. I recall more than a few asides at the expense of trans people, not necessarily particularly mean, per se, as far as comedians go, but definitely making them the butt of (barely) jokes as he kind of rambled and ranted. It's honestly shocking to me that he's apparently *still* stuck on the issue. There are soooo many things to make fun of, so many jokes and so many subjects of jokes. Whether or not he is pushing back against PC cancel culture or whatever bullshit, what's the big deal? Just move on and find something else to talk about or make fun of, it's a big world out there. I still think Katt Williams (of all people, who incidentally was hanging around the venue back at that 2015 show) put it best: "Look, if these are the confines that keep you from doing the craft God put you to, then it probably ain’t for you."

I haven’t watched, honestly probably won’t. But hey! remember that time he quit his job and went to a different continent because he though a crew member “laughed wrong” at one of his sketches during taping?

I was Team Dave on that, and still am. But with his last few outings being some real tReNcHaNt middle age rich guy commentary on safe spaces, etc, pretty odd he doesn’t appear to grasp the irony here.

Anyway, he’s still one of the best to ever do it, even if i haven’t gotten more than a light chuckle out of any thing he’s done in well over a decade.

Time to Go to Bed, old man.

Watched the new one. Not sure repeatedly saying he's having his last word on it is going to work out so great. I dare not look at the Twitter conversation.

its like a scab he can't stop picking at. the more backlash he gets the more he feels the need to "have the final word" on it. he wants to make shitty trans jokes like its 1994, but since he's the "greatest of all time" (as he says in this special) if people don't find it funny then the problem is with them, not him. it's like Kanye West shit. he keeps whining about how you can't make trans jokes anymore, which I don't think is true - practically every comedian on the planet had a 5-minute routine about Caitlin Jenner - but his trans jokes are way more mean-spirited than funny. whining about pronouns and comparing transgender women to blackface just isn't gonna cut it in 2021. he also goes off about how nobody is "listening" to him but he also confuses gender and sex numerous times so obviously he isn't really listening either.

the special is garbage, don't bother with it. he does like 10 minutes of (bad) regular material and then spends the remainder talking about LGBTQ stuff. he calls trans people "annoying" like 700 times. he keeps pushing back against the accusation that he's "punching down" but literally ends the special by saying "You took the Oscars away from Kevin Hart!" and asks LGBTQ people to not punch down on "his people". it's a 75 minute special and there are almost no jokes in it. the only punchline I remember is "Space Jews". dude needs to write better material.

At least for part of his audience (assholes), the trans jokes hit. You can't really say that for the rest of his weak material. Might as well become a terf comic.

Whatever he's doing is the opposite of soundbites, as far as weaving stories and threads. 8:46 is still one of the strongest things to come out of the summer of 2020.

he calls trans people "annoying" like 700 times.

truth bombs

it's so weird. I saw the same tour Josh referenced and that was the first time I actively noticed him being antagonistic towards the transgender community, and really the first time I felt uncomfortable/alien while watching something Chappelle did. I've mentioned in other threads, but the audience was *very* dudebro and white, and I knew we were in trouble when Dave said "let's give the gay community a hand" and I started clapping and maybe two other people did, and everybody else gave stares a la Phil Leotardo.

but once Dave started making the jokes "well HER dick is out" and talking about "why I gotta change my pro-nouns", they all started rolling, and it was just an ugly feeling. he got off of the topic and back into what he does best but at the time I didn't think this was going to become, like, his new hobbyhorse. I hoped he'd like walk it back or at least just....not make those awful jokes again, and now it's like....a staple of his comedy.

it's so incredibly infuriating that a guy who did that George Floyd special last year and also produced some of the most rib-shattering laughs of my lifetime now has the proverbial comedic taste of battery acid to me. I just wish he'd hang it up, possibly actually apologize later and repair at least some of the damage, but just fucking off and retiring would be enough for me now as a start.

instead he's going to continue on in this vein and still be the biggest standup on the planet (please no one come in here and mention Russell Peters is big in Australia or what have you)

who

One thing that irked me was the bit about DaBaby…”you can kill a black man, but you better not say shit about gay people”…like does he not remember Michael Richards? Didn’t he do a pretty famous bit about that? I mean I get that this is a comedy special so of course he’s gonna say absurd shit but it’s all underpinned with this subtext of “the gay community is doing so much better than the black community” which he spends the next hour on. Like none of those parallels work

as a trans woman who loved his shit so much in the past, it’s been a fucking bummer of a time watching this happen. wish I didn’t feel like it was practice for a lot more to come. fix yr heart, Dave.

I mean he had disgraced Louis CK perform at one of his shows, so this should all come as a non-surprise.

Also, don't forget his "give Trump a chance" SNL monologue.

tbf he did say he regrets saying that but I can't remember if it's because he realized how dumb it was or if it was another one of those "you didn't understand, what I was trying to say was..." things. post George Floyd & 1/6 he's been pretty critical of the MAGA crowd but I guess he never dedicated an entire Netflix special to it

about half way through this new special, wow this is fucking bad.

hateful and just plain unfunny. like honestly this is way worse than anything bill burr has ever done. lazy as shit.

You made it further than I did, but I had the same feeling - lazy ass, Bill Burr level "pushing buttons" shit. Offensive and hateful to boot.

But cue a million tweets and reddit comments about "you just don't get his levels" and "he's just showing the hypocrisy".

And if you criticize him, you're violating his freedom of speech

”you can kill a black man, but you better not say shit about gay people” is the one that actually raises my blood pressure, like....you've seriously never heard of violence against LGBTQ+ community, ESPECIALLY against transgender folks? They're being killed too, asshole!

like perhaps, Dave, you might recognize that this is why we would like for you to not contribute to these negative views of said community.

nicole said it best

the bit in the end where he talks about Daphne Dorman (a trans comedian he was friends with who killed herself a month after getting a shoutout in "Sticks and Stones") looked like an opportunity to pull himself out of the tailspin but it wound up being pretty gross as well. first of all he suggests that her suicide may have been a result of how the trans community treated her after she defended Chappelle. he doesn't quite say it but he implies it pretty strongly. at no point does he examine *why* having an association with him would've caused that sort of backlash, other than the usual "they're annoying/humorless/sensitive/triggered" shit. secondly he pretty explicitly says that she's one of the "good ones" and that she "isn't part of their tribe, she's part of my tribe" and you'd think that someone who's spoken so eloquently about race issues in the past would know exactly what coded language like that means.

wait til dave finds out about the existence of lgbt black people

...and what's happening to them.

Yeah no I'll skip on this one... this shark has jumped

who

a comic who is bigger than Dave Chappelle iirc

It felt like there's like 40 minutes of material about trans people, which: What is your weird compulsion to keep talking about this?! Fucking stop!

I think half of that material was actually really kind and sweet and empathetic and vocally anti-discrimination (ie., the stuff about why the North Carolina bathroom bill is awful) and like 90% of the Daphne Dorman stuff, and he honestly could have just performed that material as sort of a mea culpa

But, yeah, for the rest he just keeps drilling down on the "gender is assigned to you at birth" and "trans ppl need our love but they are still icky" and all the lazy pronouns/letters jokes. And it's like, why do you even need to show that ugly side of yourself to a national audience over and over and over again?

"It's not fair that these people got compassion quicker than me" is a real shitty hill to die on.

That said, I'd still watch 10 more of these

Jaclyn Moore’s interview about this is really good

https://t.co/tPv95rJCPD

Jaclyn Moore is the fucking best, I love her

Lol

https://medium.com/@AkilahObviously/stevie-wonder-wasnt-the-weirdest-part-79792d04f7d5

Let the record reflect that I wanted to title the essay “At Lease Use Lube If You’re Going to Insist On Riding Us This Hard.” My editor went with a different approach. https://t.co/NifTKmo470

— Saeed Jones (@theferocity) October 11, 2021

^^ From that piece:

Watching Chappelle contort himself to justify ashy ideas about gender, queerness and identity is harrowing, because the only thing more brutal than someone saying hurtful shit is someone saying hurtful shit moments after making you laugh, moments after cracking you up in a way that’s both fun and deeply needed, moments after you making you feel like you all got free together. America has only gotten better at trying to kill me. Laughter is no joke, which makes the betrayal, years in the making at this point, all the more devastating. I feel like a fool to have rooted for Dave Chappelle for so long. Things were easier when the men who wanted to hurt me just said so at the jump.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/11/22720724/netflix-suspends-trans-employee-tweeted-dave-chappelle-the-closer

[Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos] said that Chappelle’s last special, Sticks & Stones, is Netflix’s “most watched, stickiest, and most award winning stand-up special to date.”

He added:
“Several of you have also asked where we draw the line on hate. We don’t allow titles on Netflix that are designed to incite hate or violence, and we don’t believe The Closer crosses that line.”

Netflix suspends trans employee who tweeted about Dave Chappelle special https://t.co/BBtrKhwetF pic.twitter.com/GsZTPM3d5h

— The Verge (@verge) October 11, 2021

cancel culture strikes again

Jinx.

This shameful moment might have been more appropriate for a Netflix thread. TPB is still going strong, just sayin’.

This part was entirely clear:

The tweet thread went viral, quickly spiraling into a conversation about free speech and cancel culture. Netflix then suspended [the tweeter] Field along with two other employees for trying to attend a director-level meeting they weren’t invited to.

*was not entirely clear

They suspended the employee who tweeted about the special, for trying to crash an executive level meeting. The headline couldn't have been "Netflix employee suspended for trying to attend a director-level meeting", because who would have clicked on it?

most award winning

Hmmmm.

this is a good piece on it

https://www.readthepresentage.com/p/dave-chappelle-transgender

I can't really identify with the social issues surrounding this but I can talk about how weirdly unfunny nearly all of Chappelle's LGBTQ material is; it's pretty much all bad South Park bits. always the worst part of his set outside of all the lengthy retellings of the time a woman or queer person was mean to him. though these are often the same bit

Yes strong exposition of the "one joke" there. This bit they linked is really good:

A very good two minutes from @JamesAcastor. pic.twitter.com/Ca05RsFwOB

— Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink (@AnandWrites) October 7, 2021

Although it doesn't address the 'oppression Olympics' aspect of Dave's latest show, which from what I saw on Twitter sadly seemed to be getting the most traction.

feel like that Acastor bit might have had a little more impact if it was even remotely funny

i’m not sure that’s his actual twitter account. his last name is spelled acaster. i love that bit fwiw. it’s true that it’s verging on anger/vitriol but it’s warranted frankly. and i love that he calls out gervais by name after pretending he’s not going to.

That whole Acaster stand-up show is remarkable, tbh. His shows on Netflix are very funny, but Cold Lasagne... is an excellent extended piece of work.

Yeah, James Acaster is one of my fav comedians working.

The bit is about catharsis not humour yeah and if that was his entire shtick it'd be tiresome but frankly all comedians do it these days (Chappelle special seems to be nothing but this from the descriptions I've read) so I won't begrudge him it. Plus it's genuinely important to have vocally anti-transphobic ppl in the public eye in the UK, for obvious reasons.

i’m not sure that’s his actual twitter account.

It's not, he's not on any social media.

It's not, he's not on any social media.

An exemplar for us all

lol just watched someone in a comment thread write an impassioned defense of Chappelle that began with "I haven't watched this yet, but..." and then responding an hour later with "oh god, I'm 45 minutes into this and it's awful, nothing I wrote above applies to this" so I guess this isn't landing the way he thought it would

As noted elsewhere, it's telling that literally no one is talking about the jokes. Assuming there are some.

As noted elsewhere, it's telling that literally no one is talking about the jokes. Assuming there are some.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, October 13, 2021 3:22 PM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I still think he's super funny even though I loathe the bigotry, but to each their own obv

what would you say were your favorite jokes from the special

I thought that everything hes done since his reboot bar the standup about george floyd has been on its way to grim rather than funny or clever, and the last one before this wasnt worth the watch

If this one is where people whod stand over that one are stepping off, im happier again with the decision to not bother

Acaster has not made me so much as grin, ever, maybe ive missed all his good stuff

xpost

idk, I liked a lot of it, Clifford, glory holes, the bathroom bill is stupid, "1980s gay face,"

Acaster has not made me so much as grin, ever

perhaps we're witnessing the evolution of observational humor into stand up comics just acting as general observers of society, like bloggers or print media columnists who occasionally venture upon an vaguely amusing witticism or two

I mean, people's whole "I watched all 70 minutes of this and sat stone-faced at the absolute dearth of jokes" thing is really suspect in the era where people listen to like seven Comedy Bang Bang knock-off podcasts a day

And, yes, that's coming from someone absolutely exhausted and disgusted at like three specials full of TERF stuff

"Hey, at least I got a few chuckles out of this klan rally, unlike the podcasts you like"... ok man whatever

yeah man, the metric fuckton of people that watched this and love Chappelle and keep him a millionaire are def in it for the blind hate, not the jokes, you got me

the blind hate is just like a bonus

people listen to like seven Comedy Bang Bang knock-off podcasts a day

― licorice in the front, pizza in the rear (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, October 13, 2021 3:22 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Where do you even get these strawmen?

“Did you see James Acaster?” “Yeah.” “Was it funny?” “No, but I agreed the fuck out of it.”

That is tbf a good line

Yes he does attempt some actual comedic routines but mostly it felt like really long setups that culminated in a punchline he might as well stolen from 4chan. There were like 4 bits on here where I was going “wait that’s it?”

I mean, people's whole "I watched all 70 minutes of this and sat stone-faced at the absolute dearth of jokes" thing is really suspect

Yeah, based on what I'd read beforehand, I was expecting just one long, bitter rant, or some kind of angry TED Talk, but from the beginning the fact that it's a standup comedy set is pretty clear, from, you know, all the jokes.

xxposts There's a whole word for that!

https://www.vulture.com/2018/01/the-rise-of-clapter-comedy.html

See: Nanette.

Kind of a return to "humorist" Mort Sahl type thing

Late period Carlin

one more time around (might do it)
the day
I unbookmarked
this threaaaaaaad

The Rise of Clapton Comedy

can’t say that knowing whether the transphobic material is couched or is not couched in jokes makes any difference whatsoever, and i personally do not care if this hateful ass material gets represented or overemphasized, fuck dave chapelle

i know that you’re all saying “fuck dave chapelle” but then this convo became about whiney owning people who listen to earwolf podcasts, not the time or the place

https://boxd.it/2cLYHR

In 2015 he was doing the standard Caitlyn jokes, even penning an entire song! In 2021 he is big-upping Orban's Hungary and calling for the violent removal of us from society because we are child-molesting rapists. i woke up today to an email from my dad to his friends demanding that local school boards be taken over everywhere to prevent trans and gender non-conforming people from raping children in school bathrooms, that school boards are the easiest point of entry to wholesale systemic takeover and that if local elections will not work, 2nd amendment solutions to the problem will have to be invoked. at least once a week i get a letter from my proud TERF father who will not help me financially as i drown but who will tell his friends loud enough so i can hear that people like me should be violently executed by vigilante mobs because the courts can't be counted on to do it right. When Dave says that he is a TERF, when he says that he stands with JK Rowling, this is explicitly what he is aligning himself with. He even says each individual word, reads a definition. Dave knows what he is doing. Dave is telling us that he wants a world where he can be and go about his life that we are not and cannot be part of and he is willing to see state power brought to bear to achieve those ends, where he does not have to see trans people or be reminded of our existence, where trans discourse is outlawed or suppressed, where the only trans medical care is conversion therapy. This is the world that Netflix wants and is actively working toward. This is the world that Dave Chappelle has put his heart, his soul, his past decade of cultural production to achieve.

Yeah. Given the timing, I got the feeling that that was as much a response to an incredibly offensive and ill-advised review of the special from another Letterboxd-er as it was a response to the special itself.

you’re gonna have to be more specific not that i want to read it or know anything about it

both of nathaxnne’s reviews of this are essential reading

i admit that i haven’t seen this special and have only read about it but i don’t really care

It was a review by k@liofthedolls, brad. Avoidance is probably the best recourse.

oh i did read that, it was awful

I just want to know where that suit’s from.

In view of all the many trans ilxors who've come out and have found happy encouragement and support here, anyone who explicitly puts himself on "Team TERF" is not just misguided, but an active enemy of those ilxors. You can't be their ally and find the slightest excuse for Chappelle.

Acaster has not made me so much as grin, ever, maybe ive missed all his good stuff

He's a British comedian, if you're expecting good stuff I wouldn't hold your breath.

how many countries do you think have good stand-up comedians?

My Albanian is a bit rusty.

acaster is hilarious, and totally not nanette/bo burnham thinkpiece anti-humour imho

^^^^ agree

Laughed myself silly to Cold Lasagne and his Netflix specials, and his Taskmaster series, and even his notorious Bake-Off episode.

The Acaster bit about the British Museum is funny but not much else imo

I watched the special last night. Oddest statement was "Everyone accepted Caitlyn Jenner when she changed her name but no one accepted Muhammed Ali when he changed his name from Cassius Clay!" uh wat

It actually was a huge thing tbh

Text: Everyone accepted Caitlyn Jenner when she changed her name.

Subtext: I live inside a bubble and do not know it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali_vs._Ernie_Terrell

i watched the chapelle special just so no one could accuse me of not *listening* to dave chapelle as he often emphasizes in this special where he can use google well enough to learn what “terf” means but not “punching down”? exhausting. the special is not majority trans material but that’s the entire subject of the last thirty minutes and it’s fundamentally the thesis of the special so who can remember how funny the race material was (pretty funny! he used to be better though, or i used to laugh at this stuff more, who can say) or how i chuckled through his send up of “times up” bc no major reckoning with sexual abuse should be led by rich white movie stars, i’m with you there dave, also whoever called the cops on him is a cop, the lgbtq community is full of cops but fucking every community has cops in it bc society is horrible. and all of this is just a launching pad for him to say that he’s “team terf,” that he agrees with jk rowling, whose words i can’t imagine he’s dwelled on extensively, that “gender is a fact”, that he can’t even make a good point about bathroom laws without talking about how freaked out he would be at the sight of trans genitals, when i use a men’s bathroom still even though i’m a woman bc i can’t tell which one i might be harassed in *more*, that this is branded as “truth telling,” as edgy, boundary-pushing comedy when it’s just the same shit over and over again with no progression whatsoever to the talking points, god, who cares, who cares if dave chapelle loves pussy so much he can’t accept the idea of a woman without a pussy even though, of course, as the final twenty minutes reveal, he was dear friends with one, and, of course, as the final minute reveals, he is absolutely cool misgendering her because she would’ve found it hilarious. but, unfortunately, she is not here to enjoy his hilarious trans jokes, and i am, and to me they are not tremendously different from
ppl denying and denigrating my existence bc i have the temerity to call myself a woman, they’re just like, delivered with a smirk, couched in regular degular jokes so the normies keep laughing all the way home about these shitty trans ppl who won’t leave dave chapelle alone and keep telling him he’s “punching down,” and his attempt to actually reckon with this is 100 percent reactionary and like he’s digging his heels in to things he knows are wrong but he refuses to change his mind about, and it’s extra excruciating bc the bathroom bit… is so close to the fucking problem, just
stop caring so much! let ppl use the bathroom they want! stop determining someone’s womanhood based on whether they bleed or not, there are women who don’t bleed and men who do. this is a fact, this is the truth, what dave chapelle told me is not the truth, and what good is an art form, what good is being the GOAT at an art form, if you’re not going to tell people the truth (with joeks of course)

xpost I mean, he's not wrong about Ali but he's falsely setting it up as a black vs LGBTQ thing, when it's prolly more of a 1966 vs 2021 thing, cf. Yasiin Bey and Yusef Islam

i’m glad he said he’s not gonna tell trans jokes anymore, good for him, shame he had to talk about trans issues for 30 minutes and still be wrong about them to get to that point

The question is not is he going to stop, it's why has he been repeatedly making trans "jokes" at all for the past 5 or 6 or 7 years? Again, by way of Katt Williams, the whole world is ripe for ridicule, so compulsively returning again and again to the same very specific subject at the expense of a very specific group of people at the very least betrays such a lack of creativity as a comedian it's downright embarrassing. Setting aside whether or not you should be allowed to make fun of certain groups, if you won't or can't even find a funny or funnier alternative among literally countless other subjects, then that says it all.

Again, he was talking about this shit at the 2015 show I saw. Black community vs. LGBTQ, trans rights, etc. For a guy that's had several specials since then, let along stand up sets, it's curious it remains a mainstay of his shows.

its b/c he got criticized for it and like all middle-aged standups he cannot take any form of criticism without tripling down

xpost I mean, he's not wrong about Ali but he's falsely setting it up as a black vs LGBTQ thing, when it's prolly more of a 1966 vs 2021 thing, cf. Yasiin Bey and Yusef Islam

― licorice in the front, pizza in the rear (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, October 14, 2021 11:19 AM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the false binary shit rankles so much, have some fucking historical perspective, the kind you clearly display in so much of the work that isn’t about trans ppl

xp Or, probably even less savorily, he believes that the focus on LGBTQ rights is costing advancements in Black rights.

In all this, I keep flashing back on this episode: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jan/11/richard-pryor-great-meltdown-racist-hollywood-bowl

Which, nearly half a century ago, seemed to have had an exponentially smarter capacity for spitting out uncomfortable/bitter truths and cutting to the bone than anything I've seen described in this latest Netflix special.

Its comfortable, lazy stuff without much insight without much wit without much humour

In other words, bad comedy.

That Richard Pryor goes a bit beyond “uncomfortable truths”:

Motherfuck women’s rights. The b*tches don’t need no rights. What they need to do is pay the people on welfare.

I mean, his anger in that moment was for sure an uncomfortable truth.

(Compared to DC's documented years if not decades stewing about how good the LGBTQ community allegedly has it.)

Not just anger, but alienation.

Sometimes, as at the Hollywood Bowl, Pryor slammed into the fact that he wasn’t in Peoria any more and that he had lost that community; that no matter how large his estate in the San Fernando Valley, he would continue to feel out of place; that no matter how high he rose in Hollywood’s pecking order, his sensibility would never match up with that of its right-thinking, liberal precincts. The debacle at the Bowl left him reeling, besieged. As the controversy raged on, Pryor did not calm the waters by issuing an apology.

Instead, he continued to act out the polarities of his Hollywood Bowl performance in his own life. In the week following the gay rights benefit, he made two impulsive and startling commitments. The first was to his on-off lover Deboragh McGuire, whom he proposed to and married within the space of a few days. The second was to an experimental piece of gay theatre – a monologue by a little-known actress named Kres Mersky that nowadays would be labelled performance art, and queer performance art at that – which he included in his primetime TV show in total defiance of NBC. As part of his segue into that monologue, Pryor camped it up as Little Richard, with the high pompadour, glittering cape, and leering lusciousness that were the trademarks of Little Richard’s gender-bending style. In that costume, Pryor blew air kisses to his audience with a twinkle in his eye.

In my opinion, he is punching on LGB and more specifically trans people because doing so has been extremely lucrative for him (and by extension Netflix).

that even managed to make me feel bad about watching it

I mean, guessing his actual motives is admittedly Chappelle Fan Fiction, but I wager that nearly two decades being hailed as America's Great Truth Teller Revealing Our Great American Truths, he's just not used to having to respond to pressure with admitting he's actually in the wrong here? It all could have been deaded like three specials ago even if he just gave an insincere apology and moved on

Zinoman:

The first time Dave Chappelle wanted to quit a TV show, he didn’t do it. After shooting the pilot of his soon-to-be-forgotten 1996 ABC sitcom, “Buddies,” an amiable comedy about an interracial friendship, the network fired his co-star Jim Breuer, which led Chappelle to tell his manager he wanted to quit.

He was talked out of it, and the show got poor reviews and was canceled after five episodes. When I interviewed one of the co-creators, Matt Williams, several years ago for an e-book about Chappelle, he told me he wished he had built more conflict between the leads. “Then you could capitalize on the charisma of Chappelle,” he said. “But he was different then. He was impish. He was playful, innocent. No danger.”

As controversy boils over Chappelle’s latest special, “The Closer,” I have been thinking about what lessons he might have learned from this early failure. At Comedy Central, he famously did quit and returned with a new mystique. In his current incarnation, he leans hard into conflict, and part of his enduring popularity is his ability to manufacture a sense of danger.

In his last special, “Sticks and Stones,” Chappelle took aim at the audience and cancel culture, made many jokes about transgender people and defended Kevin Hart, who had lost the job of hosting the Oscars because of protests over old homophobic tweets. Chappelle earned backlash, negative reviews and the sympathies of the right-wing media, which has become invested in issues of comedy and free speech in the Trump era.

OK, so what did Dave Chappelle do for his next act? Take aim at cancel culture, mock trans people and bring up the same trans friend he mentioned in the last special. By the time he defends Hart again (even if losing the Oscars was the worst injustice known to man, does it deserve two specials’ worth of protest?), you might be feeling a sense of déjà vu.

A few days before “The Closer” premiered, Chappelle predicted he would be canceled; a few days later, he appeared at the Hollywood Bowl at the premiere of his new documentary and talked again about being canceled. The fact that no one thinks Dave Chappelle will be canceled, whatever that means to you, is beside the point.

This rollout was a performance of danger. Of course, what is dangerous is an open question. “The Closer” courts outrage with dopey attacks on #MeToo, and jokes linking Asian people to Covid, but mostly with the subject he has been fixated on for years: transgender people.

When Jaclyn Moore, a showrunner for the Netflix series “Dear White People,” announced she would no longer work with the company while it produces “dangerously transphobic content,” the statement was a reference to the numbers of hate crimes against transgender people and the statistics about mental health and suicide.

There is a tendency these days to quickly conflate language and violence in discussions about controversial art, especially comedy. A punchline, even an offensive one, is not the same as a punch. And yet, it’s hard to imagine that anyone who has attended middle school (or seen a Martin Scorsese film) would not understand that jokes can contribute to a culture of bullying and abuse.

In defending Chappelle, Ted Sarandos, the co-chief executive of Netflix, waded into the issue of the consequences of cruel jokes by arguing that he doesn’t believe there is a relationship between art and harm. It’s a rickety platform to stand on when your company consistently puts out work that hopes to raise awareness, increase representation or move the culture. If art can do good for the world, then isn’t it possible the reverse could be true?

The fallout from “The Closer” is in some ways the most interesting thing about the special. A group of trans employees has planned a walkout on Wednesday to protest. And anger within Netflix led to a rare and fascinating leak of internal viewing numbers, revealing just how little we understand success in the era of minimal transparency by entertainment companies. According to Bloomberg, based on Netflix’s measurement of efficiency, which balances a show’s reach with its price tag, Bo Burnham’s “Inside” (which earned the comic $3.9 million) performed significantly better than “The Closer” (which cost $24.1 million).

Chappelle remains a gifted yarn-spinner who shifts from gravitas to irreverence as deftly as anyone. But judged purely by originality and construction of jokes, he’s a star in decline. There are some startlingly hack jokes, like a well-worn one about Mike Pence’s sexuality, and others about pedophilia and Covid that badly need the shock of offensiveness to make an impact.

Why has he been so fixated on transgender people for so many years now? It may be that he believes deeply that gender is a fact. Maybe he passionately wants to let us know he’s “Team TERF,” as he says in “The Closer” — an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Neither of those points come with punch lines. It could also be that he sees pushing these hot buttons as the easiest way to make a big fuss.

One of the major developments in comedy over the past decade has been the rise of comics animated by opposition to left-wing dogma and cancel culture. I have seen struggling comics boost their careers by pivoting right — or, more precisely, anti-left. There’s no question that there is a market for it. While he has lost some fans, Chappelle is a hero to this group now. In middle age, Chappelle acts less like a comic and more like a pundit. He’s far more comfortable than most of his peers in going long stretches without jokes. His recent monologues about George Floyd and the way streaming services have not compensated him for showing his sketch show were both righteous and largely without humor.

In 2006, after he left “Chappelle’s Show,” which made better arguments that jokes should be able to punch in any direction than anything he says in these specials, he proclaimed in an interview, “I feel like I’m going to be some kind of parable.” Then he said he was going to be either a legend or a tragic story.

Give Chappelle credit for this: In a climate in which people seem to get more excited about culture wars than culture, he has figured out a way to be both.

Still, I suspect the long-term impact of the last few specials will not flatter his reputation. Comedy moves fast. And right now, there are more funny transgender stand-ups getting hours ready at comedy shows in the city than ever before. The legacy of “The Closer” might be less in the jokes it makes than in the ones it inspires.

In defending Chappelle, Ted Sarandos, the co-chief executive of Netflix, waded into the issue of the consequences of cruel jokes by arguing that he doesn’t believe there is a relationship between art and harm.

somebody tell this guy what propaganda is

How did it cost $24 million to make that special

dave’s fee

Damn that’s like 8 million a punchline

in the wake of norm macdonald’s death i saw some quote from him that was like, if the audience doesn’t find my jokes funny, that’s their fault, because i’m the comedy expert. i guess they all believe that

“why are y’all booing, i’m right”

i’m sure the specials do pretty well. there’s a big audience for chappelle and a big audience for bigotry. netflix executives keep saying their objective is to “please their audience” so by definition the chappelle special works for them. and they try to get out of the fact that it’s bigoted by saying hey, we have all this pro-trans content too. we have a diverse universe of content. it’s a pathetic defence. “we serve lots of food here. only a little bit of it is deadly poison. and in fact the poison is pretty popular.”

One of the major developments in comedy over the past decade has been the rise of comics animated by opposition to left-wing dogma and cancel culture. I have seen struggling comics boost their careers by pivoting right — or, more precisely, anti-left.

This is happening over here too.

i’m sure the specials do pretty well. there’s a big audience for chappelle and a big audience for bigotry. netflix executives keep saying their objective is to “please their audience” so by definition the chappelle special works for them. and they try to get out of the fact that it’s bigoted by saying hey, we have all this pro-trans content too. we have a diverse universe of content. it’s a pathetic defence. “we serve lots of food here. only a little bit of it is deadly poison. and in fact the poison is pretty popular.”

― Tracer Hand, Saturday, October 16, 2021 12:23 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's insidious in two ways. One is that the controversy surrounding the special is so obviously a marketing tool, turning what I think is important discussions about comedy and bigotries into something that just serves the bottom line of Netflix shareholders (and Chappelle's future cheques). And also since the marketing tool IS the discussion, it's inescapable. I have been working 70 hours weeks and other than The Squid Game, The Closer is the only other 'content' I've heard about these past few weeks, and no matter what you think of Chapelle or this special, all of his ideas are transmitted regardless of seeing the special.

I have been a proponent of the notion that if you are not the audience then the best thing you can do is to tune out, but you can't, because Netflix and Chappelle want to make as much money as possible by being everywhere to market their content. Unless you black out from media altogether, you gotta participate in the discussion. I can only imagine how hurtful it can be to trans people who don't want to participate. I mean I don't want to participate in it and I find it exhausting and it does not even concern me. Then Chappelle has the supreme bad faith of calling himself 'canceled' when he got what is possibly the biggest platform a comedian as ever had.

Chapelle actually reading the "dictionary definition" of feminism like a fuckin fedora reply guy was a particularly pathetic moment

Maybe I shouldn’t mention it but whenever I get into the car it seems that one of the Comedy Channels is on and I end up hearing what suspiciously sounds like an (anti-)#MeToo comic and I get (more) depressed or angry.

Unless you black out from media altogether

from like, all media? or just streaming video services? because the latter is actually not that hard. it's pretty easy to avoid big corporate-suit media if you want to, but you have to actually want to.

what are these Comedy Channels in the car? is this a Sirius thing?

Yes. I don’t know which is worse, tbh, the Comedy Channel or the Politics Channel, or whatever it’s called, which seems to be the other alternative, at least when I play Russian Roulette with the ignition key.

As if there weren’t enough reasons to ban cars

OTMFM. Whip it on me, wins!

An editorial that ran in Variety in July 1945. pic.twitter.com/zA66lRhElO

— Kliph Nesteroff (@ClassicShowbiz) October 18, 2021

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/01/the-power-of-dave-chappelles-comedy-netflix-the-closer

In 2005, Chappelle walked away from a reported fifty-million-dollar contract with Comedy Central for two additional seasons of “Chappelle’s Show,” his sketch-comedy series. Years later, he explained that he’d been conflicted about the effect of his brand of racial humor, which relied heavily on enacting stereotypes in order to ridicule them. He had begun to wonder whether his audience got the second, more subtle layer of his work, or whether it was entertained purely by the stereotypes. Chappelle, as he told David Letterman, was attuned to nuances in his work that it would have been more convenient (and more lucrative) to ignore. There was always the risk, in riffing on the racial absurdities of American culture, of reinforcing rather than undermining them. The absence of concern of this kind about “The Closer” is striking, and suggests that Chappelle’s line about being rich and famous is more significant to the controversy than has been noted. Onstage, he refers to himself as the man who walked away from fifty million dollars, but the credibility he derived from that act sixteen years ago is now being deployed defensively and cynically, as if to place above suspicion any possible motive for telling denigrating jokes about trans people. He is also the man who walked into a reported sixty-million-dollar Netflix deal.

In 2005, it meant something for a Black man to reject an enormous pile of money in the name of integrity. The past two weeks reiterated a contrasting point: that Black men, too, can be invested in the prerogatives that wealth purchases. Earlier this year, Netflix removed old episodes of “Chappelle’s Show” from the platform at the comedian’s request, forgoing the revenue it would have reaped, after he called the contract that allowed Comedy Central to profit from the show more than a decade and a half after its release exploitative. Sarandos has dismissed requests from trans employees that “The Closer” be removed.

Days after “The Closer” aired, Chappelle performed at a sold-out event at the Hollywood Bowl, before an audience that included Nas, Lizzo, Stevie Wonder, Brad Pitt, and Tiffany Haddish. He remains powerful and influential, despite the protests from a comparatively small community of activists and their supporters. The turbulence around “The Closer” will, in all likelihood, amount to just another speed bump in Chappelle’s path. In gliding through this situation, he has emphasized a fact about power that was never particularly noteworthy. Because the one thing that has not been cancelled is the check.

^ jelani cobb almost always worth a read imo

His concerts are rallies now, apparently. This is on the level of Lenny Bruce reading his trial transcripts from the stage.

http://www.instagram.com/p/CVde5tAFT4H/

wow

much canceled

so persecute

this motherfucker can afford bodyguards to tackle someone who even steps on his shoes, meanwhile he whines like this when his comments actually lead to getting transgendered people outright murdered.

"his comments actually lead to getting transgendered people outright murdered"

Citation?

Lmao “AM I CANCELLED??” the man is beyond parody

Funny to think there’s an entire generation of teens who only know ~this~ version of Chappelle, it’s kinda like the way I grew up hearing a ton about Michael Jackson but not really getting why he was so goddamn famous

*lead*, not *led*.

They're the type of comments that over time lead to incitement of violence

He got a really positive review in The Economist this week

He's getting cheered on by the people that said "Derek Chauvin did nothing wrong". Would think he'd want to look at *who* is agreeing with him and take stock

Gadsby crack really pushed this one over the top

He got a really positive review in The Economist this week

like most other uk-based media outlets, supporting transphobia has been the ideological line of the economist for ages

but wow they really called him "gender realist" lmao

Yeah and he's "torching the pieties of the identitarian left."

I'm a subscriber, but the opinion pieces in The Economist are so relentlessly cringey that it's demoralizing. It's a magazine that I am literally afraid to open every week.

i'm a gender surrealist

what a crybaby-ass bully

I do like to imagine, like, Hadley Freeman and Julie Bindel forcing themselves through a season of Chapelle's Show because Chapelle is an ally now.

the way he complains non stop about being bullied while insisting over and over that people can't criticize him until they watch 6 hours of Netflix specials actually reminds me a lot of the Dilbert guy

ha yes otm. or Peterson.

next Chappelle special "I've Got a Lot of Tweets to Respond To"

The best kind of humor is that which is focused on explaining at length to the unappreciative portion of the audience why they're wrong. It's a surefire recipe for laughs.

it’s not surprising that even smart, formerly (insert sarcasm font) incendiary truth tellers can have retrograde opinions on this stuff, but this is the hill you demand to die on? with all the things going on in this fucked up country where you could “trigger” folks w actual power…

and you’re not even ‘dying’ on any hill; you’re being celebrated by bloodless ghouls in the Economist and a bunch of hooting psychopaths who literally think slavery or miscegenation laws should be “left to the states”

I think thats at least one core central disappointment among many here, this is the least interesting, least valuable thing he could be spending this vaunted genius and bravery on

For a cadre so quick to lean back on the importance of their profession they sure as a group fail en masse to wield the power and platform and ability in a way that demonstrates much respect for the inherent possibilities- it rings so hollow

whiney with the rebuttal in 3....2....1

A Va. councilman deletes of a post of himself dressed as Randy Watson from “Coming to America”

“Like Dave Chappelle, I don’t go around walking on eggshells, worried about hurting someone’s feelings. But I never intended for this to be a racist issue.”https://t.co/RTRKTryiPl pic.twitter.com/D0P2t3hV31

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) October 29, 2021

Welp you earned this Dave

oooooooooof

hey he’s an edgy councilman, if you get offended that’s on you

But he’s the greatest councilman of all time

that’s a man who loves to painstakingly repeat the infamous Chris Rock bit for extended family and coworkers

A virginia politician in blackface, will wonders ever cease?

the only part of the chapelle specials that will stick with me is the bit about how kevin hart dreamed about hosting the oscars his whole life and they TOOK IT from him. its like something your fattest aunt would say while shes already crying

— 🎃🐒 (@Lowenaffchen) October 31, 2021

Sounds racist. ^^

i don't care if your fat aunt is white, black, purple

netflix continues to market the hell out of this

Sell the controversy...

Can anybody point me to a heartfelt pro-trans show by a huge celebrity on this trash service? Given that’s their defense (that they air a multitude of perspectives etc etc)?

Doesn't Orange is the New Black have a major trans character played by Laverne Cox? I mean, fuck Netflix over all this, but she made a big impression, and her character was treated pretty sympathetically, iirc.

Yeah, Netflix basically gave Cox her career, but she's the only example I can think of.

laverne cox is not as famous as Dave Chappelle and wasn’t that like 10 years ago

https://www.disclosurethemovie.com/about

The last episode of OITNB aired in 2019, not that it matters.

There's other stuff with trans characters but not on Laverne's level.

Is there any trans character in film/tv/stand-up as famous in America as Dave Chappelle is? That's a tough standard to meet.

Ok fair enough! That looks good PK

xxpost It is!

Is there any trans character in film/tv/stand-up as famous in America as Dave Chappelle is? That's a tough standard to meet.

she is also, contrary to what Chappelle says, a horrible person

Searching Eddie Izzard on Netflix gets you recommendations for Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais!

I was trying to avoid Caitlin in my equation because I thought we were talking about fictional characters and/or stand-up comedians? Of course, KUWTK is as fictional as it gets and airs on Hulu rather than Netflix so it's not much of a difference.

I don't think Eddie is anywhere close to Dave's level in the US, although she does have some pretty good film/tv credits (usually male presenting).

Can anyone recommend any good writing on the current Chappelle kerfuffle? I'm looking for something to assign for my students to read next term.

i thought the j cobb piece i linked upthread was good
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/01/the-power-of-dave-chappelles-comedy-netflix-the-closer

Parker Molloy: https://www.readthepresentage.com/p/dave-chappelle-transgender

New from me: In his latest comedy special, Dave Chappelle said his trans friend was hounded into suicide by other trans people.
I couldn't find any evidence that it happened.
https://t.co/QhKbPsss6E

— Michael Hobbes (@RottenInDenmark) November 17, 2021

guy seems pretty easily triggered

Dave Chappelle made a surprise stop to his former high school this week – and had a heated Q&A session with nearly 600 students about his Netflix special https://t.co/XYnhpCxYTp pic.twitter.com/8f3NTglVpY

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) November 25, 2021

One of his worst bits yet

Dave Chappelle personally came to a city council meeting and threatened to remove his $65m dollars of investments from his city if they allowed a developer to move forward with an affordable housing program. The objection wasn't to the build, but the affordable housing component. https://t.co/3ahCy1KqmN pic.twitter.com/l8MTxhhlJ7

— grimm (@ExileGrimm) February 9, 2022

He should be sliced to bits.

"hmm, don't think I've given people a large enough variety of reasons to hate me yet".

dudes about to get paid $10,000,000 for a standup special that's 2 jokes and a 50 minute rant about how poverty is a choice

and his fan base will grow to include more people that he might be alarmed are part of his fanbase if he actually gave a fuck about that anymore

2004: "fuck $50 million, my show may be inadvertently harming my own community, and that's more important to me"

2022: "Not in MY backyard!!!!"

It's just baffling.

Dave got old.

Rich dudes + weed usually = angry, parano rich a-holeness. Unless they're excellent musicians or something like that.

In the replies:

This is completely inaccurate. The objection is they are building it directly in his backyard, taking pictures of his home & using it as a selling point.
The PUD presented by Oberer planned for houses starting at $300k and up. Not affordable

torn between having absolutely no good faith left to give Chapelle and being skeptical of twitter news

(ok doing some digging those comments are bs, fuck Chapelle)

It’s amazing how low a person can fall.

It's always been weird & gross how much he clearly enjoys being the king of whatever that dumbass small town is that he lives in

"Traffic issues, a lack of parking ..." These are the kinds of BS objections people around here have raised every time a lower or mixed income or mixed use building has gone up over the past few years, and despite these fears never coming to fruition, afaict, they keep getting raised again and again.

On the other hand, calling $300k (reported starting price) homes "affordable housing" is a pretty big stretch. Maybe more affordable for *that* affluent exurb ... Anyway, Chappelle has burned through any benefit of the doubt - that's what being a professional asshole will get you - but I've yet to see a news story on this that delved deeper than clickbait cut-n-paste "Chappelle doesn't like poor people" headlines. From what I understand his main objection was not the idea of "affordable" housing but housing designed to attract more people like *him*, people with money that want to move or retire to a quaint blue town (pop. 4000) about 30 minutes outside of friggin' *Dayton* in the middle of red Ohio. And afaict, the development (single family homes) is still going forward, just in line with what had previously been agreed to rather than a more ambitious cash grab of duplexes and townhouses couched as "affordable housing." Like, I don't think we're talking Section 8 here.

Am I mishearing him in that lil speech or is he basically saying "I'm worth more than the developer company so you better side with me"?

thats what i got, too.

i dunno, ime people on chappelle's level dont make a massive distinction btw "section 8" and $300k home people

Dave's concern trolling of "guys this isn't really AFFORDABLE HOUSING" isn't cute

The rest of the development is going ahead, just not the affordable housing part. The houses going up are $300k not the proposed affordable ones.

Where did you see a proposed price on the "affordable" homes that got scuttled? Because I haven't seen that. (Not saying you're not right, just reemphasizing that I have seen very little actual reporting on this story).

Anyway, Chappelle is an asshole, but we're not talking Jimmy Carter coming in to hammer nails. This is a developer in a affluent and appealing exurb that wanted to change the zoning to allow them to build (and sell) significantly more smaller (but not really much cheaper, again, afaict) houses to take advantage of a booming market. This is how they roll. They symbolically dangle out the prospect of affordable housing (and I think I did see they all but literally did this in the plan, offering a plot of land that could *potentially* be used by the town for affordable housing at some undetermined point in the future) while making bank off the bigger lots/homes.

I didn’t see a number on the affordable ones but the 150 single family homes are the $300k ones. That would, by necessity, make the cancelled affordable homes less than $300k.

Developer cynicism is correct but irrelevant here. The entire project didn’t get cancelled, just the townhomes/condos. The developer dangled affordable living and Dave & Co. got mad that the village council might make them a reality.

significantly more smaller (but not really much cheaper, again, afaict)

Probably a topic for another thread, but: a combination of economy of scale and some baseline necessities means that smaller houses are not proportionally cheaper. If it has to have plumbing and electricity and hvac and a kitchen it's going to cost a chonk to build. Adding square footage is more costly but it's not linear. It may be the case that a 3,000 sq ft house costs twice what a 1,500 sq ft house costs, but other factors are at play.

In my neighborhood there is a tax structure that incentivizes developers to set aside x percent of units as "affordable" so that x percent can be market-rate. But the housing is (or supposed to be) all constructed at the same time by the same developer, comparable in quality, and all up to code. hence

offering a plot of land that could *potentially* be used by the town for affordable housing at some undetermined point in the future

is a bullshit move

Yeah. So this is the only close to reported story I've seen on this:

https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/video-yellow-springs-votes-no-on-housing-plan-after-chappelle-others-speak-up/WFSD7UXAYVECLOFCZPWU4IV4FE/

If I read the proposal right, the original plan was 143 single family homes, but the abandoned plan divided those homes between single-family and duplexes/townhomes, starting at mid-$200k (categorized as "high & moderate-income for sale + affordable types"), with, yes, "donated land for affordable housing."

Anyway, Chappelle is an asshole, but we're not talking Jimmy Carter coming in to hammer nails. This is a developer in a affluent and appealing exurb that wanted to change the zoning to allow them to build (and sell) significantly more smaller (but not really much cheaper, again, afaict) houses to take advantage of a booming market. This is how they roll. They symbolically dangle out the prospect of affordable housing (and I think I did see they all but literally did this in the plan, offering a plot of land that could *potentially* be used by the town for affordable housing at some undetermined point in the future) while making bank off the bigger lots/homes.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, February 10, 2022 11:12 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

josh bringing the NIMBY solidarity

Anyway, Chappelle is an asshole, but we're not talking Jimmy Carter coming in to hammer nails. This is a developer in a affluent and appealing exurb that wanted to change the zoning to allow them to build (and sell) significantly more smaller (but not really much cheaper, again, afaict) houses to take advantage of a booming market. This is how they roll. They symbolically dangle out the prospect of affordable housing (and I think I did see they all but literally did this in the plan, offering a plot of land that could *potentially* be used by the town for affordable housing at some undetermined point in the future) while making bank off the bigger lots/homes.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, February 10, 2022 11:12 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

josh bringing the NIMBY solidarity

even putting the affordable housing issue aside, it’s good to build houses in rich exurbs and bad when rich incumbent homeowners abuse the political process to stop it

All I know is that I drove through this part of Ohio over the summer and ... they can have it.

Crikey
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-05-04/dave-chapelle-tackled-during-hollywood-bowl-comedy-show

"Getting tackled by guy with knife" is pretty cutting edge.

I'm sure everybody will rush to blame Will Smith, who was the first person ever to attack or heckle a comedian in history

Well, I guess his martyr complex about being a besieged beacon of free speech or whatever will now be turned to solid stone.

First ever “the narrative demanded it” defense

nice of the LA Times to spend half the article talking about the trans stuff, in case any conservatives hadn't made the baseless connection yet

tbf sounds like Chappelle made the baseless connection first

"while the attacker was getting beat up,” Chappelle “made a joke about him probably being a Trans man.”

can't believe this guy used to actually be fun

https://www.axios.com/2022/05/04/dave-chappelle-other-fan-attacks

Dave Chappelle attack the latest in a trend of performers targeted onstage

It's a trend!

"Musicians Keith Richards, the late Amy Winehouse and Akon all also experienced fan incidents at their shows, per Rolling Stone."

wow. All this recently?

yes of course, you didn't hear about the late Amy Winehouse being attacked by a fan at one of her concerts that has taken place since the Will Smith incident, in this recent and alarming trend??!

I guess Drakeo the Ruler getting murdered at a concert didn't count because it happened off stage.

Jamie Foxx's Chappelle impersonation lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TvWBPJkMtw

I really hope this is the Akon "fan incident" they're referring to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vygxmr8iKmA

I guess Drakeo the Ruler getting murdered at a concert didn't count because it happened off stage.

also being assassinated by the LASD for exposing their corruption in court is a degree or two different from angering one listener with your material

my favorite part of tonight was when dave chappelle ambushed us at the john mulaney show, told a bunch of transphobic jokes, a massive stadium of people laughed, and then john mulaney hugged him at the end

— rylan ☻ (@testosteronejew) May 21, 2022

so is the trans shit like, his entire act now? what the fuck

I know people who've seen him a couple times at small gigs over the past month and it's mostly trans and woke jokes now

Yeah, it’s apparently his whole thing now. There was a thread on Twitter going around about his “surprise” appearance before Mulaney at Red Rocks last month that was all trans jokes, with some jokes about disabled people and apparently a mocking Chinese accent thing too. Fuck Mulaney for supporting this dude.

think Mulaney may have severely misjudged his own fanbase here

Guys who go down that hole don't come back.

Really disappointed in Mulaney, though.

with some jokes about disabled people

Specifically making fun of a disabled girl in the front row, and saying he assumed she had sex with her dog.

I pledge no anti trans weirdo surprise guests on my summer tour.

— Tim Heidecker (@timheidecker) May 21, 2022

Yeah fuck Mulaney, fuckin creep.

It hours without saying fuck Chapelle forever

-Goes-

Outside of the Chappelle stuff, Mulaney definitely kinda trucking along like there’s not an ACME anvil about to fall on his head. Seems like a guy who got out of rehab who didn’t learn anything from rehab.

Not hard to imagine what Carlin would say about Chappelle’s fixation on attacking trans people

pic.twitter.com/3nC63gbyLT

— ℮oin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) May 21, 2022

nailed it

And to think, after they paid Chappelle hundreds of millions of dollars, or whatever it was, Netflix's latest purge of employees reportedly included a significant portion of their LGBTQ "Most" subbrand.

Though Duke Ellington HS said it would be renaming its theater the Dave Chappelle Theater in honor of its most famous alumni, that was not the case Monday night. Chappelle, attended the renaming ceremony of the Theater for Artistic Freedom and Expression. https://t.co/sFfbRqF9zu

— Tracee Wilkins (@TraceeWilkins) June 21, 2022

Well, at least it's no longer named after some aristocrat no one remembers

wasn't posting to shit on him. glad he's giving money to the school and happy that the kids there pushed him on those issues

His lil Ellington acceptance speech was nice. Provided some new insight into why he's digging his feet in about the cancel culture stuff

Glad for him

Sorry, wrong thread

haha

Provided some new insight into why he's digging his feet in about the cancel culture stuff

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, July 27, 2022 9:21 PM (forty-two minutes ago)

https://www.google.com/search?q=lobotomy+appointments+LA&oq=lobotomy+appointments+LA&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l4j33i299l3.5896j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

captain save-a-bigot over here, sheesh

I for one would really love to hear what the guy who got paid $60,000,000 from Netflix to talk on stage for 6 hours thinks about cancel culture

frogbs didn’t you watch like his last four specials

yeah until I saw the part where he blames his trans friends' suicide on SJWs being mean to her on Twitter cuz she was friends with Dave, only to have it discovered that not a single mean tweet was directed her way. idk that was so low I dont really care what he has to say anymore

They had him host Saturday Night Live yesterday? Why?

Did anyone subject themself to the shitshow? Why? Just kidding — was it as bad as would be expected?

it was supposed to be okay, but on the other hand, who gives a shit.

Chappelle's monologue was filled with anti-semitic hints, winks and nods. He strongly implied that it was racist for Adidas to pull out of their relationship with (Kan)ye because it took wealth and power away from a black man and that fact by itself was evidence of its inherent racism. He also implied that (Kan)ye was only guilty of indiscretion and should have known better than to directly challenge the real power structure (hint: it's full of jews).

Seemed like an explicitly antisemitic monologue from what I’ve read about it

I mean, “Jews should be open up to the fact that everyone else has it worse” is itself a well-practiced antisemetic trope

“It shouldn’t be this scary to talk about anything,” he concluded. “It’s making my job incredibly difficult. And to be honest with you, I’m sick of talking to a crowd like this. I love you to death and I thank you for your support. And I hope they don’t take anything away from me… whoever they are.”

As much as anything, it's just so fucking tiresome to hear these rich assholes act like they're horribly oppressed and on the verge of being disappeared.

why anyone watches SNL these days is a mystery to me

sarah squirm is funny

she should get her own show, or, alternately, the show should just be her for 90 minutes

ok I watched this and depending on your tolerance level for things, I thought it was fine.

All else aside this was clearly the most phoned-in Chappelle host stint ... he was in maybe 30% of the show? And over half of that was his monologue?

ok I watched this and depending on your tolerance level for things, I thought it was fine.

― akm

Which “things”, transphobia or antisemitism?

the rumor was that some of the writing staff stayed out for the week in protest, hence the longer monologue. I didn't see MOlly Kearny in the episode at all (but she's a featured player and hence not always there anyway). I feel like he was in most of the sketches though? the one where he had Mikey Day do his character was great.

Kearny was in the last bit with the three wannabe Lonely Island writers

Which “things”, transphobia or antisemitism?

transphobia and trans issues weren't mentioned once. there was an extended piece in the monologue that to my mind wasn't antisemitic, he just pointed out that lots of jewish people do work in hollywood, but if you are not mentally well or something is wrong with you, you start to draw conspiratorial lines and scapegoat people.

Iirc all his past recent hosting gigs had long monologues. In fact, I think most stand-up comedians (like Mulaney or CK) often have long or longer monologues when they host.

i’m just pointing out that black people commit more crimes than white people relative to their percentage of the population, not saying it means anything, just asking questions, something to think about

He also said he's tired of saying things in front of audiences, so maybe he hangs it up soon?

akm can i just make sure i’m understanding you right that if somebody thinks the parts of chapelle’s monologue where he talks about how many jews there are in hollywood is antisemitic, you would consider that person “not mentally well”?

no, that's not what i'm saying.

My understanding of what he said was that he believes mentally ill people can be conspiratorial and then unfairly blame groups of people for their perceived ills. I may have misunderstood him, but that was my takeaway.

and not only mentally ill people, I think he may have also implied that Kyrie Irving is dumb.

You don’t have to be mentally ill to be an antisemite you might just be a washed up comedian on national television

I may have misunderstood him

He tried to play both sides of the street by keeping his verbiage vague and teasing, but it was very clear that all the strongest signals were in complete solidarity with (Kan)ye and Kyrie Irving. It was all very wink-wink but his clear message was "we black people SEE how racist the jews are, but you all can't see it because you're white".

i’m just pointing out that black people commit more crimes than white people relative to their percentage of the population, not saying it means anything, just asking questions, something to think about

― Tracer Hand, Monday, November 14, 2022 10:21 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

His early career was this exact joke.

Oops. I think you were making that exact point. I’ll move along!

I AM CANCELLING MYSELF

I WILL CONTINUE POSTING HERE TO LET YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT IT

This was a good sketch (no need to watch if you don't want to!), unrelated to any controversies around his monologue or recent specials:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUTF-cbiPYI

Reading "this is anti-Semitic dogwhistling" into a fucking SNL monologue is absolute Tumblr brain

And what kind of brain do you have Mr Hipster Puppies

Twitter brain

i watched it in real time. it was antisemitic. he tried to be all slick "oh im much smarter than the audience" in his dumb smug way and also he had a dumb brand new leather jacket that looked stupid. he's dumb. at least he wasn't doing the dumb i smoke where cigarettes where most people can't power move thing.

I think his joke "There’s a lot of Black people in Ferguson, Missouri. Doesn’t mean they run the place" pretty much definitively and unambiguously says "No, there is not a Jewish Conspiracy"

Nobody said it wasn't a fucking SNL monologue. That's obvious and has nothing to do with anything. So, are you saying there was no anti-semitic dogwhistling in it, and any perception of it being there is only a product of one's delusions? If so, let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. 88.

but there ARE a lot of them in Hollywood

definitively and unambiguously says

as I said, he tried to play both sides of the street

I mean, I agree that he was playing both sides, but the side I see is the same "edgy/mischievous" Chappelle shit we've had for 20 years

It's like saying the "Now let's try it with Spanish gibberish over it" bit from Chappelle's show was dogwhistling anti-Latinx sentiment.

if you say so I guess they are exactly the same. I can't say. never saw his show.

whiney there is no point in doing this

Like, idk, if you're on the internet it def seems like political comedy in all its forms has basically outstayed its welcome.

Edgy stuff is "dogwhistling" or "punching down," regular neoLiberal stuff is "cringe," woke stuff is "not funny." Like you honestly can't win at this point, so maybe the Chappelles of the world just have poster's disease where they can't stop talking, but he also still fills stadiums full of people hanging on his every word, which I guess is the 90% of not-always-online people

Like maybe John Oliver gets a pass since he has like a team of researchers at his disposal, but he's also responsible for "DRUMPF" so

whiney there is no point in doing this

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Monday, November 14, 2022 1:57 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk also this

thinking about dave chapelle in 2022 is just profoundly depressing to me, i cannot extend him any sort of benefit of the doubt or "this has always been his style" kinds of justification. the man sucks, he says shitty things constantly, and he has sustained an audience even though he's not very funny anymore either. it's not worth it

That 90% or not always online people are very much online judging by the overwhelmingly positive comments on the YT clip of the monologue

stans gonna stan

Like, idk, if you're on the internet it def seems like political comedy in all its forms has basically outstayed its welcome.

It's like saying the "Now let's try it with Spanish gibberish over it" bit from Chappelle's show was dogwhistling anti-Latinx sentiment.

― insane oatmeal raisin cookie posse (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, November 14, 2022 12:51 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe because that was a Carlos Mencia level bit and this one ended with "I just hope ***they*** don't take everything away from me"

"whoever (winky winky) they (wink wink wink) are"

Chappelle's whole vibe is bitterness and resentment now. Even if the explicit content isn't dog-whistling or whatever, identity-based humor is gonna sound bad when that's the tone.

full disclosure i did not watch his monologue nor do i plan to but like Wasserman, at this point I've seen enough

"at least he wasn't doing the dumb i smoke where cigarettes where most people can't power move thing."

that was half of Bill Hicks act

you used to be able to smoke in wayyyy more places when bill was alive

true, I was just pointing out that chappelle lifted that schtick

if Hicks was still alive he'd be a full-on bigoted cunt too

Like, idk, if you're on the internet it def seems like political comedy in all its forms has basically outstayed its welcome.

RIP, "political comedy". You had a good run.

I don't mean to single you out NV, but the frequency with which ilx puts imaginary not-dead Bill Hicks on trial for contemporary political crimes is kind of weird? Dude's been dead for over 28 years but he gets brought up here remarkably often and most of those times it's this fantasy projection into a future he never lived in thing. I genuinely don't get it, aren't there enough bigoted cunts around now?

agree. I have no idea how bill hicks would have turned out. he undoubtedly influenced a lot of shitty comics and people, but also influenced a lot of great ones and, even if his stuff hasn't aged extremely well (and IMO most comedy doesn't age well.... Bob Newhart being the exception) he was fucking funny and edgy and great at the time.

anyway, Potato Hole and Sarah Sherman's weekend update bit aside, the best part of the episode was Blackstar

I don't even want to dive into what those dudes subscribe to.

blackstar? yeah no shit

i'm unaware of mos def/bey being problematic but the other dude has some fucking issues. he remains a good rapper though. as I said somewhere on ILM, hip hop is rife with this kind of nonsense, not new, and people don't like to call it out.

Hicks had a lot of bad shit but his most famous bit is about opening your heart to love and using the world's money for bombs to feed everyone instead of closing yourself off and stocking up on guns and fear. Maybe he would have gotten even worse over time but... dude was a lib.

…ertarian

I think 95% of Bill Hicks bashing is “I used to like this when I was young so let me telegraph how much smarter and enlightened I am now.”

Kevin Smith Syndrome

kevin smith was legitimately good when we were young and legitimately lame now but his heart seems to be in the right place and you can't hate anyone who wrote a tweet about their wife's clit the way he did

what about her taint, though

I don't mean to single you out NV, but the frequency with which ilx puts imaginary not-dead Bill Hicks on trial for contemporary political crimes is kind of weird? Dude's been dead for over 28 years but he gets brought up here remarkably often and most of those times it's this fantasy projection into a future he never lived in thing. I genuinely don't get it, aren't there enough bigoted cunts around now?

agreed.

It was a response to the post at the time but I guess without imagining a Hicks that doesn't exist it's easier to say there was stuff in his actual routines that was misanthropic and misogynist and leave it there

There was stuff in his routines that was misanthropic and misogynist, and also homophobic. It wasn't the entirety of it, and he'd already dropped the homophobic material before he died, so I guess there's a possibility he might have evolved past that.

Frank Zappa probably a better analogy, I knew a lot of people who liked Kevin Smith growing up but we didn't think he was some transcendental talent or anything like that

xpost Good we have Howard Stern around to show that it’s at least possible.

Single most offensive thing Hicks did was popularize the use of holding the mic cupped real close to his mouth and going DOOT-DOOT-DOOT-DOOT-DOOT-DOOT like a machine gun.

not sure Hicks deserves the blame there
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/BitesizedEnchantedAnkolewatusi-size_restricted.gif

Like, idk, if you're on the internet it def seems like political comedy in all its forms has basically outstayed its welcome.

I maintain the cultural window was open for Michelle Wolf far too briefly

― ex-McKinsey wonk who looks like a human version of a rat (Eric H.), Monday, November 14, 2022 2:12 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Feel like some of her sentiments on "outrage culture" and metoo and feminism would not go over well as posts on ilx (acknowledging the inherent differences between stand up bits and ilx posts)

I think the comedy world's rallying around to try to place itself above criticism just made people want to criticize harder. I do notice a lot of people on twitter not seeming to understand how comedy works however which is usually eyeroll inducing.

these people genuinely seem to think that audiences can't tell the difference between a comedian making a joke and a comedian trying to do satire or social commentary. like there's a reason Norm MacDonald never caught this kind of flack for his LGBTQ material

It's a worthwhile question whether political comedy is necessary. I used to think so, I guess? The Washington Post Drawing Board was one of my main ways of understanding the world when I was a child. Plus Doonesbury and Bloom County. Then Weekend Update and the Daily Show, etc.

When the news got to be too much, "what can we make fun of?" was a useful filter. There was no way for me, at nine years old, to get a comprehensive grasp of the economy or the Middle East, but I could certainly get the gist of a joke about Ronald Reagan; humor helped me understand the world.

I am not sure that's so anymore. Some things have achieved a level of absurdity that satire can't match - and the pace of events sometimes exceeds the typing speed of every humorist in L.A.

Just think about the bits with pillow guy and the landscaping business press conference and Giuliani's hair dye. Comedians and late-night gag writers could be forgiven for simply shrugging and saying, "Uh, okay, reality is too fucking stupid to even parody anymore." They could all quit en masse and go do goat farming or something.

a few years ago I thought the Conan O'Brien style of late night comedy was outdated because politics was becoming so absurd and was integrating itself so closely into our daily lives that it felt like you couldn't just ignore it. but I really yearn for that sort of thing again. I cannot fucking stand another "person man woman camera TV" joke. since I brought up Norm I'll mention something he said about Trump-era humor, which is that it fundamentally doesn't work because the people writing it hate the man so goddamn much. when SNL was doing stuff about Clinton there was at least some level of affection behind it. imo the MyPillow stuff was at least funny for a while because the dude at least had this oblivious Midwestern pitchman charm to him, same reason why it was more fun to mock Alex Jones before it became clear that the dude was actually just a total lunatic.

I don't think that lack of affection is what makes Trump-era political humour bad, it's more that irreverent humour about Trump is redundant because Trump is already irreverent. I remember seeing this quote from Chappelle about Trump calling covid "the kung-flu" where Chappelle said something like (paraphrasing) 'ok, that's pretty funny, but you shouldn't be saying it when you're the president. *I* should be the one making jokes about the kung-flu, *you* should be the one being serious and dull and responsible'.

The traditional dynamic is that politicians present an image of seriousness and respectability and responsibility and the comedians that mocked them had licence to be flip and offensive, but then Trump ate comedians lunch by being more irreverent and offensive that they were, so comedians were reduced to taking on the serious/responsible role - all that 'have you no decency, sir' Colbert type stuff

Agreed. At present I find both styles dire, and I am way past ready for the planet to be consumed by an exploding star

When I have laughed in the last eight years, it has not been because a comedian said something

YMMV

the comedians who mocked Nixon in the 70s hated him, but it still worked because he was someone who believed in respectability and keeping up appearances, Trump is like if instead of Nixon saying "I'm not a crook" he said, "yeah, I'm a crook, so what" and then took the piss out of his opponents for caring about the fact he was a crook

The traditional dynamic is that politicians present an image of seriousness and respectability and responsibility and the comedians that mocked them had licence to be flip and offensive, but then Trump ate comedians lunch by being more irreverent and offensive that they were, so comedians were reduced to taking on the serious/responsible role - all that 'have you no decency, sir' Colbert type stuff

In a nutshell, this ... Again, Andrew Potter's On Decline is the (brief) text that has realigned my thoughts the most clearly over the last couple years in positing that everything we once hailed as counterculture has become culture, and vice versa, and it's especially difficult for liberals to wrestle with that reality.

Especially Gen X liberals

I mean, yeah

I feel like Obama actually being pretty good at a kind of stand-up comedy is also part of the new dynamic though I don't have a solid theory about it. Maybe something about how in terms of comedic performances that actually got under Trump's skin, Obama can never be topped (much to all our regret, possibly)

i think that's right even tho on the good-at-stand-up scale trump > obama

(maybe that's why it rankled)

Trump hosted SNL before becoming president

You should listen to the preezy of the united steezy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziwYbVx_-qg

God, Jimmy Fallon. The most cringe.

i asked my kid and now know that in fact the world is made of cringe. it is the fundamental building block of matter.

I cannot watch Fallon, it's physically painful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjmpqgkde0s

Tim Heidecker's stuff is kind of "about" Trump often and works by emulating the world of grifters around him instead of directly going orange man bad.

I'm skeptical if the political reality ever wasn't totally absurd once you got down to it. Certainly the Third Reich was plenty absurd and there's tons of good comedy mocking it.

I think most anti-bush comedy was about as bad and toothless as the orange man stuff - have you tried rewatching any of it recently? somehow we came to expect more as an audience

maybe it felt more transgressive back then in the US context when the rest of the media had to support bush by default (and comedy and punditry hadn't entirely merged yet) but the actual jokes were as hacky and surface as any of the trump stuff

comparing the two eras, my memory is that the Bush-era stuff often felt a lot more pompous & self-congratulatory. people would compare Jon Stewart to Edward R Murrow and say things like "he's not a Bush he's just a SHRUB LOL!" and get a big standing ovation as if that was a really brave heroic thing to say. with Trump people seem to just laugh at him like any other celebrity.

most Bush era comedy was bad, but I don't think it had the same thing where all the people doing impressions of Trump come across like tribute acts rather than mockery, it's like someone doing an impression of Pee Wee Herman or something, Trump is already an entertainer doing a bit.

I think this was a funny Trump spoof, though I suppose it's more a spoof of the way the media covers him, but the idea of the tortured psyche underneath the schtick - 'Big Talk: Trump Just Announced He’s The Only Person Who Can Stop The Vines That Strangle Him In His Reflection'

https://clickhole.com/big-talk-trump-just-announced-he-s-the-only-person-who-1825122779/

colbert's correspondents dinner shit was pretty amazing at the time given the environment. i should re-watch to re-eval but fuck that i'ma just clap for ppl who are hardcore now

yeah I think Tim Heidecker does a really good job of it, imo what makes his current standup routine work is that like 90% of it is just what people like Jim Breuer are doing now

Anthony Atamanuik is the only Trump impersonator who got to that vile, lizard core of the man