As predictable as a house tour, the LGBT mafia is on the warpath again. They seem to be making it a tradition to try canceling Dave Chapelle every time he releases a new stand up special.
Undoubtably one of the greatest comedians of his generation, Chappelle’s knack for getting under the skin of trans activists almost rivals his talent for stand up.
Admittedly, I am a bit late to this topic, but there is an aspect of this special that I have not seen mentioned in the wide array of coverage this “scandal” has received. I believe that the majority of talking heads out here have completely missed the entire point of Chappelle’s magnum opus. Be that an intentional oversight or not, it deserves attention nonetheless.
After announcing that this would be his final special, Chappelle tells the audience that he intends for “The Closer” to be the key to completing his body of work on Netflix. He tells us that all the questions that have come up about his prior specials will be answered and that the reasons for the jokes he made this far will be made apparent.
This is something to remember as we go through the highlights of the special.
In one of Chapelle’s better points/jokes in this set he talks about rapper Da Baby shooting a man in Walmart. Then he compares the lack of career blowback from the shooting to the fallout the rapper received after saying some offensive things about the LGBT.
He ends the joke by observing that it is worse for a person’s career to hurt a gay person’s feelings than it is to murder someone in broad daylight. That’s the cleaned up version of it, at least.
Later in his set Chappelle justifies his criticism of trans people by openly admitting that he has no problem with trans people in general, because his real issue is with white people. It’s not their sexuality that he has issue with, it’s that there are white people among the trans community.
Chappelle says that his real issue with the LGBT community is, “they are minorities, until they need to be white again.”
After transitioning to talking about women and feminism he mentions being accused of hating women, but he denies this and says he is a feminist.
He uses a conversation he had with a black feminist friend to say the problem with the feminist movement in America is white women, using his friend’s words to introduce the idea before agreeing with it and expanding on it.
“I supported the ‘Me Too’ movement, but the whole time… I thought the way they handled that was stupid,” Chappelle says.
After a pause for shocked laughter from the crowd he adds, “It was! It was white.”
As he continues his criticism of “Me Too,” the theme of blaming them on the whites remains persistent.
In the second half of his show he starts telling more personal stories that he presents as true as he intersperses more jabs at whites and more directly at “poor whites.”
One such story is an encounter with a white transgender woman who is yelling at him in a bar about his transphobia. The point of telling this story is that this trans person keeps saying “my people” in reference to trans people, as she berates him for his offensive jokes.
He uses this to very clearly say his problem has never been with trans people, it’s “always been with white people.”
The diatribe he goes into next builds on that. He claims every transgender joke he has ever made was not about them, it was about “us.” He believes that LGBT activists have it easier than black activists because so many of them are white.
What really annoys him is that people don’t listen to what he is really talking about. They just hear mean things being said about trans people. Really his whole career has been about the plight of the blacks and the whites who he begrudges.
Still after saying it in plain language, people still are not hearing his message. They still hear this and call it transphobic.
And you have the conservative pundits racing to the rescue eager to defend Chappelle and to applaud his fearlessness in speaking up. But they don’t hear him either.
I do hear him. He is saying with his entire body of work, “I hate white people.”
This is glaringly obvious to me, yet no one talks about it. I assure you that a white man sharing similar opinions about black people would never find work again.
Imagine someone saying, “I never had a problem with lesbians. It is just the black lesbians!”
I doubt the headline would be about this fictional person’s hatred of lesbians.
I don’t say any of this to call for Dave Chappelle to be canceled. I don’t want him censored. I’m actually a fan of the man’s work. I’ve watched everything he has ever done, multiple times. I honestly believe he is in the top 5 funniest men of this generation.
I don’t need entertainers or celebrities to agree with me or to even like me. I am secure in myself enough that the validation of famous people does not interest me. Sure, it would be nice, but it’s not something I require.
I am able to take the value of the work of men separate from my value for their character or personality. Just as we revel in the world changing work that the American founders did despite shortcomings in their personal lives.
If this does end up being Dave Chappelle’s last go around with creating specials, or just his last dance with Netflix, he will be missed. I hope he can raise his children in peace. I also hope one day someone or something touches his heart and wakes him up to his own bigotry so that he may overcome it.
True Storey
True Storey 