

It felt like what I imagine a sweat lodge might be like, manic pounding heart and all.
#Dave chappelle friend committed suicide full#
To a room full of people who’d just lost their houses and, in many cases, their relatives, Joan Rivers acted out an elaborate prescription that we all shut the fuck up about the damned flood and our misfortunes. In New Orleans once, just a few years after Katrina, Rivers stepped on stage before a truly intersectional audience (heavy on the gays) and immediately launched into a giant fuck you to all of us Katrina “whiners” in the audience.

At her best, she didn’t just troll audiences she tried to set their brains on fire. Can We Talk Shit?Īs long as he’s so mega popular, Chappelle will always face louder scrutiny, but none of this is new, much less revolutionary. He’s so focused on those who are laughing that he can’t seem to hear the people who aren’t laughing. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to realize that, especially in the case of trans people, mockery is often their default dilemma, and so more mockery doesn’t really help them. Kelly by joking about him, yet don’t give him credit for normalizing “transgenders” by making jokes about them.Īnd while I don’t really agree with that logic (and most trans people don’t seem to, either), I do believe that Dave’s underlying intent is to bring the world together through laughter. In an extra Q&A attached to the end of Sticks and Stones , Chappelle wonders aloud why people have blamed him for “normalizing” R. He obviously believes that, since Chinese people were never slaves in America, a black man can say whatever he wants and that by writing these jokes, he includes these groups in the normalcy of being teased, whether he’s right or not. In the course of teasing trans people, Chappelle also commits a horrible impersonation of a Chinese person. But my trans friends hated it, thought it was lazy, fuck Dave Chappelle, etc. His new “alphabet people” bit, where he imagines the different sexual and gender preferences riding in the same car, all headed toward equality but all of them resenting the trans person in the back seat because of how much the trans plight complicates their collective situation-seemed pretty thoughtful and clever to me, and not an inaccurate portrait of trans people’s position within gay communities.

Meaning, primarily, the LGBTQ communities. Fellow TravelersĬhappelle then proceeds to his second main course: making fun of everyone who has, in the past, asked him to stop making fun of them. But it’s just a wild, wrong-ass thing for someone to say out loud. It’s not the world’s smartest joke Dave could stand to take his own advice and leave MJ buried. My laughing at that joke doesn’t diminish my disdain for pedophiles.
#Dave chappelle friend committed suicide free#
He ribs the latest Michael Jackson molestation documentary (“I felt like HBO was sticking baby dicks in my ears for two hours.”), and though even the joke’s premise (that kids should be honored to receive fellatio from the King of Pop) is groan-worthy, and though it’s very hard to hear Chappelle even jokingly say, “I do not believe these ,” he does land a string of solid, tasteless pedo jokes, including: “Someone needed to teach these kids that’s there’s no such thing as a free trip to Hawaii.” Kelly, Kevin Hart, Jussie Smollett-a bunch of people and controversies that most people likely will not remember 20 years from now. In the special, he moves on to both roast and attempt to vindicate a host of “persecuted” celebrities, judging the guilt or innocence of Louis CK, R. He’s transformed into your favorite uncle, whose stories you love listening to even when his logic’s not all the way solid, and he says some shit you might really disagree with if you weren’t so sure unc was joking. In fact, it makes all of Chappelle’s grousing on the subject feel like…a joke! Imagine that.Ĭhappelle has a different, more serious, more ponderous flow now. The fact that Netflix has paid Chappelle close to $100 million to make four new comedy specials in one year for the world’s biggest streaming platform renders mute any question of comic oppression. He tells the audience directly, “Y’all niggas is the WORST motherfuckers I’ve ever tried to entertain in my FUCKING life!” Chappelle then quickly moves on to the special’s theme: He says he feels like the world is not just changing but closing in on him, and threatening to take away his right to joke about whatever he likes. Dave Chappelle opens his newest Netflix special, Sticks and Stones , with a bit about how Anthony Bourdain killed himself despite having “the best job that show business ever produced.” He compares Bourdain to an underemployed friend of Dave’s, who Dave believes should consider suicide.
