Perhaps I live a life sheltered from popular culture, but I am only vaguely aware of Black comedian Dave Chappelle. I had not paid attention to him until the controversy broke about him making transgender humour. Well, we are a long way from the humour of Benny Hill now. I guess in the Covid New World Order, there is nothing to laugh at any more.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/10/14/dave-chappelle-for-gender-realism
“Oct 16th 2021 edition Lexington
Dave Chappelle for gender realism
A Hollywood A-lister shows how hollow—and marginal—the arguments of the
woke left are
Oct 14th 2021
How does a millionaire celebrity comedian with a boatload of awards
retain his subversive edge? The great Richard Pryor solved the problem
in the 1970s and 1980s by ever more extravagantly—and hilariously—going
off the rails. "I say, 'God, thank you for not burning my d**k,'" he
deadpanned on Sunset Boulevard, after having set himself on fire while
free-basing cocaine. For Eddie Murphy, a follower of Pryor's who has
drifted into schmaltz and Shrek, the solution has proved more elusive.
Dave Chappelle is luckier than his two heroes. Having pocketed a
reported $50m for six shows on Netflix, the 48-year-old stand-up is even
bigger than they were at their peaks. And Mr Chappelle, who lives with
his wife and children on a farm in deepest Ohio, shows no appetite for
Pryor-level debauch or for voicing cartoon donkeys. No problem. The
subversion bar has been reset so low by the censorious left that his
irreverent, observational comedy has never seemed more topical or edgy.
Thus the furore stirred by his jokes about transgender politics in the
last of those shows, entitled "The Closer", which was released last week.
Even many of his critics concede that the lead-in to Mr Chappelle's long
transgender riff is pretty funny. Because of his past jibes at the
community, Mr Chappelle claims, in mock fear, a conspiratorial
well-wisher warned him, "they after you". "One 'they' or many 'theys'?"
he hissed back. But whatever the critics thought of his craft, they
adjudged his act "transphobic" and to be condemned. As evidence, many
cited his defence of J.K. Rowling's insistence on the biological reality
that trans identity and sex are different. (No wonder, he deadpans, that
women are annoyed that Caitlyn Jenner won "woman of the year her first
year as a woman, never even had a period…") "The phobic jokes keep
coming," sighed the Guardian. "He needs new ideas," huffed Vulture.
Transgressing public mores, to deliver
laughs, or social insight, or just to make people squirm and wonder why,
has been the dominant tradition in stand-up ever since Pryor put a match
to institutional racism, too. This reflects a singularly American set of
conditions: high levels of social tension, a dominant place in popular
culture for the most persecuted group and strongly protected free
speech. Mr Chappelle, who, like Pryor and Mr Murphy is African-American
and a master of many forms of comedy, calls stand-up his favourite form
and an "American phenomenon".
Because of its connection with social justice, most standup comedians,
especially black ones, are of the left. But, again, the phenomenon must
be edgy to be funny. So no whites are excluded from Pryor's or Mr
Chappelle's racially loaded critiques, including the sympathetic
left-wingers laughing wanly in their audiences. And that dramatic
tension, between performer and fans, has increased in recent years as
the activist left has increasingly presumed to police speech. A
declaration in 2014 by Chris Rock, another top black comedian, that he
could no longer perform for college crowds because they had become "way
too conservative…[in] their willingness not to offend anybody," was a
signal cultural moment. For Mr Chappelle, who was in the process of
relaunching his career around that time, it was also inspiring.
He does not seem transphobic, in fact. If his comedy has a moral theme
it is that everyone is flawed and everyone should be accepted. Its force
lies in showing how quickly that truth is lost when group politics takes
hold. Mr Chappelle has spent much of his career railing against racial
injustice. Pointing out the equally manifest reality that women lose out
when sex is redefined as a state of mind is consistent with that record.
Even when justice is served—as in the advance of gay rights—his
subversive mind ponders why such progress is not general. "Why is it
easier for Bruce Jenner to change his gender than it is for Cassius Clay
to change his name?" he asks. "Empathy is not gay. Empathy is not black.
Empathy is bisexual. It must go both ways."
This is not exactly rigorous. Muhammad Ali's name change predated Ms
Jenner's by 50 years; and there are plenty of non-whites banging the
transgender rights drum. But Mr Chappelle is a comedian, not an
essayist, and his emphasis upon anti-black discrimination is a dramatic
device as well as a political choice. It maintains, rather improbably,
his claim to underdog status. And that can be a source of empathy, as
well as credibility, as he shows in movingly describing his friendship
with a minor comedian, a trans woman called Daphne Dorman.
"I don't need you to understand me, I just need you to believe… I'm
having a human experience," she once schooled him. He was stunned; then
slowly responded. "I believe you … because it takes one to know one."
Group politics, zero-sum and exclusionary, is dehumanising; his profane,
moral comedy is a corrective.
And the leftist Pharisees who disagree with that should reflect on Ms
Dorman. When Mr Chappelle was lambasted as a trans phobe after his
previous Netflix show, she tweeted that he was nothing of the kind and
her friend. She was hounded in turn; then jumped to her death off a
towerblock. Can that story—so vindicating of Mr Chappelle and damning of
his accusers—be true? Her grieving family confirmed it this week. So who
is the victim now?
Chapeau, Chappelle
Not Mr Chappelle, at least. Besides torching the pieties of the
identitarian left, he has also shown how marginal it is. His
gender-realist views are far more in step with public opinion than his
critics'. And if the unpopularity of their views is rarely off-putting
to the Twitterati, good luck to them taking on an African-American
superstar. This week Mr Chappelle, surrounded by a throng of adoring
A-listers, was given a standing ovation at the Hollywood Bowl. "If this
is what being cancelled is like," he chuckled. "I love it."?”
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-employees-stage-netflix-walkout-over-dave-chappelle-comedy-special-met-by-counter-protestors-claiming-jokes-are-funny/