NETFLIX STAFF APPARENTLY UNAWARE THAT DAVE CHAPPELLE’S COMEDY SPECIAL WOULD INCLUDE JOKES: It’s the Babylon Bee’s world; we’re just living in it, which is why that Reason magazine headline we’re linking to sounds like something ripped from the pages of America’s Newspaper of Record.
Comedian Dave Chappelle’s newest hourlong special, The Closer, pokes fun at people’s pieties, sprinkled with a tenderness that Chappelle has long supplied. It’s humane and irreverent and, yes, he directly deals with the criticism and cancellation attempts he’s gotten from transgender activists; why wouldn’t he? He’s never been one to shy away from good material.
If you were reading reviews of the special, you wouldn’t know that. “Too often in The Closer, it just sounds like Chappelle is using white privilege to excuse his own homophobia and transphobia,” sanctimoniously declares an NPR piece, clumsily arguing that he thinks that the plight of the black man in America trumps oppression faced by all other identity groups, intimating that Chappelle is just looking for thinly veiled excuses for his own purported animus. A Daily Beast headline reads “Dave Chappelle, and the Week From Hell For Trans People.”
Chappelle’s comedy exists in the liminal space between irresponsible and downright dangerous to trans people, or so his critics’ argument goes. He’s gratuitously edgy, pushing the envelope because he knows he can, allegedly prioritizing little glimmers of comedic payoff over nurturing a culture that’s comfortable and welcoming for trans people. But he jokes about almost everyone in a manner that could cause discomfort if you’re overly preening and self-serious. This man jokes about hoping “white bitches” get tear-gassed at the Women’s March!
No one is safe from Chappelle’s jokes—but also, everyone is safe from Chappelle’s jokes, given that words don’t directly cause harm, and that Chappelle is not uncaring or unfeeling. He seems sincere when he insists he’s “not indifferent to the suffering of someone else” (before launching into a joke about taking a shit at Walmart and trans bathroom bills and DaBaby killing a guy, of course).
“These transgenders…want me dead,” Chappelle says later on. “Every time I come out on stage, I be scared. I be lookin’ around the crowd, searching for knuckles and Adam’s apples to see where the threats might be coming from.”
“A n***a came up to me on the street the other day, he said, ‘Careful Dave, they after you,'” Chappelle says, pausing, his eyes wide. “I said ‘What? One they, or many theys?'”
Heh, indeed. Chappelle’s latest special is brilliant stuff. No wonder crybully leftists are so offended.