Chappelle is popular with Edgelords Of A Certain Age because he was their Richord Pryor when they were in high school/early college. Their parents were offended, the jokes were transgressive, he was on basic cable, and young adult males are presumed to be assholes until proven otherwise so the punching down humor and basic cruelty of it all was forgiven. Dane Cook was very popular at the same time, as was Bill Maher. Dane Cook, of course, being an angry punching-down version of Steve Martin and Bill Maher being an angry punching-down version of George Carlin. Dane Cook was eliminated by the comics themselves, who pointed out (rightly) that much of his material was lifted from Louis CK and Joe Rogan, whose stars ascended as the edgelords stopped caring about the funny and homed in on the offense as serious thought leaders of the New Right. Bill Maher followed a similar trajectory where "being funny" matters a whole lot less than "annoy my liberal coworkers." Dave Chappelle, for his part, pretty much abandoned the world when he realized that his schtick wasn't making people laugh the way it used to, and then came back when he realized that Edgelords Of A Certain Age will happily laugh at mediocre humor if it targets the same thing they hate. It's amusing to me that the same people who will die on a hill professing that Dave Chappelle is being "cancelled" will freely and happily admit that Dennis Miller just isn't funny without recognizing that audiences are allowed more leeway to laugh at a misogynistic black man than they are a misogynistic white man. It's really this simple: you're allowed puerile humor until your early '20s, at which point normies gain a little sophistication. The Joe Rogan/Louis CK/Dave Chappelle/Dane Cook/Bill Maher crowd has never advanced beyond puerile humor. Those under the age of 25, however, have an entirely different set of people they want to laugh at, and "the vulnerable" are not among them. So you stop writing jokes for puerile kids and instead write jokes for the Alex Jones crowd.
I have a weird relationship with Dave Chappelle ... I never found him very funny. I think us senior GenXers are just outside of the Chappelle window... we had SNL and SCTV, while the younger of my generation had Kids In The Hall, Almost Live, In Living Color, Up All Night, etc., and I never really liked that era of comedy. Which is where people like Chappelle and Chris Rock and the Wayans brothers came up. So I missed that boat. But Dave Letterman's new show, "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction" is a long-form interview format where Dave just sits and talks with someone he likes/respects very much. His interview with Dave Chappelle was fascinating and made me love Chappelle, and what he has done with his life. The little town he lives in. The way he lives with his family and friends, and the community he has created around him as he has matured and mellowed over time. ... then this trans-phobic dude comes out of Chappelle's skin, and starts saying really stupid, ill-informed shit about an entire class of people who are finally getting some liberty and recognition, and not being ground under the boot of white American culture-leaders... and Chappelle takes the ENTIRELY wrong position. And doubles-down on it. Again and again. I have a hard time squaring the quiet, respectful, community-building family-man I saw Dave Letterman interview, with the on-stage dipshittery of Dave Chappelle's "comedy" show?!? I'm not losing anything by tuning out Dave Chappelle, and I will happily continue to do so. But I wonder where the split is in his brain, where he fails to apply his worldview and generosity equally, and especially in the case of an abused minority, like trans people. It's weird that he doesn't see it.
Al Franken pointed out that Rush Limbaugh is a legendarily good tipper. He also pointed out that the difference between a liberal mindset and a conservative mindset is that conservatives will often be breathtakingly generous for causes and people they like without feeling any compunction to those they don't, while liberals hold that being generous only counts if you are generous towards everyone. "He loves his family and friends" is hardly something you say about an altruist.
I also think there is some 'hashtag populism' going on here, as well. The conservative will donate if you say the right buzz words, regardless of the overall message or who the messenger is. The liberal will be skeptical of your hashtags and your messenger, and will be looking for why NOT to give to your cause.
I think Al is right, and I actually think it's one of the things that's wrong with the Left. I know so many leftists who are shitty people up close but who work tirelessly for Causes. On the other hand most of my conservative friends are some of the best friends you could have in a moment of crisis, despite their shortcomings vis-a-vis humanity. My small anecdotal sample notwithstanding, I think this is clearly an area where we could learn from each other.
To tie it all back to the chicken-fucking book, conservatives demonstrate their tribal loyalty by showing preference towards those they have a cultural affinity to. Liberals demonstrate their tribal loyalty by showing no preference towards those they have a cultural affinity to. I think it's easier to be a misanthropic conservative because if you hate the right people, everyone who matters will put up with the fact that you hate them, too. It's tough being a misanthropic liberal because you're supposed to be above all that. I'd put it this way: you have a cultural bias towards non-shitty conservatives because they're putting up with you. Meanwhile you swim in a vast sea of liberals - you "know so many leftists" who are shitty but "most of your conservative friends" are great.
Oh. Dude. Say no more. Speaking as someone who paid for college mixing bands in clubs, from swing to death metal to punk to ska to disco, allow me to assert with no quaver in my voice that there is no shittier crowd on earth than a jam band crowd. That there is a hypocritical, self-satisfied set of smug-ass smarmy sociopaths.
I think it's that he made one joke in one comedy special that the internet freaked out about so he decided to make everything that came after about the people freaking out and not the material itself. The fact that no one can see that is itself sort of amusing. Ricky Gervais had a trans bit in his most recent special and the internet seemed to not notice, so there's been no need for him to address it, I guess. Or maybe it's because everyone already knows he's a nihilist and wouldn't care one way or the other was the critique is, whereas Chappelle very deliberately makes contrasts to the civil rights movement and the neo sexual revolutions, which I think rubs people the wrong way. Richard Pryor did the same thing back in the 70s...agreed to do a gay rights rally, then lambasted everyone for looking away during the Watts riots. It made the whites mad.
Gervais and Chappelle were saying different things. Chappelle denies that transgender is a valid thing to be. Gervais said he doesn't fucking care if you are trans or not. One denied your existence, the other doesn't care. I think that's an important distinction. (Of course, Gervais being a straight white middle aged man from a western country has the privilege of not having to care about others. Which is problematic, as well. But we know he knows that, too.)
I didn't notice that the internet noticed, which says something, because I'm not on the internet other than here and major news sites. I sure as fuck noticed that the internet noticed Chappelle, because even the NYT has run a gajillion op-eds about what we should all think about it.
It's fair to say that the normies noticed the Internet noticing Chappelle because the people looking to dunk on Chappelle are better connected than the people looking to dunk on Gervais. The NY Times can't concern-troll Gervais because he has targeted everyone. They can concern-troll the shit out of Chappelle because they get to do their performative "we're liberal trust us but because we love you we will only single out liberal targets as if we were conservatives."
Honestly I think Amy Schumer is a breath of fresh air. She's a raunchy, self-deprecating individual who happens to be female, which means the very people who will go to their graves insisting on Chapelle's right to offend people will also die on the hill that Amy Schumer must STFU for the betterment of society. I don't follow standup much; I read Tiffany Haddish's The Last Black Unicorn and found her positively charming. I think there's a real difference between what you can do with humor and what you should do with humor. Tiffany Haddish manages to relate a story about dating a mentally retarded man that paints him in nothing but a glowing, approving light while also deprecating herself for not being willing to make it work while the comedians I listed above will slag on the mentally disabled as a go-to bit. I really think it's far simpler than anybody wants to pretend. We all laugh at a comedian who laughs at themselves. Some of us laugh at a comedian who makes fun of the same things we hate. If you watch Eddie Murphy Raw, most of the jokes are at his own expense. Not all, but most. ALL of his negative press comes from laughing at others. George Carlin? His targets were always the powerful. If anything I think the real shift towards un-funny comedians is the cyclical attempt by The Right to win even a single skirmish in the culture wars. They never do, they never will, but every now and then they try. Ben Shapiro? Failed comic. Kellyanne Conway? Failed comic. The Right hasn't always challenged everyone else's right to existence but it sure is their thing these days. That makes them the butt of every joke, as it should. To no one's surprise, The Right is also full of people with no sense of humor or humility, and they don't like being the butt of every joke. So they champion people who say mean things that can be interpreted as funny if you take pleasure from punching down. When I grew up there was one form of deprecatory humor that was safe, no matter what: Polack jokes. Not "Polish Jokes" because then you don't get the dig in from the very title. Note that it was only safe because there wasn't anyone Polish around - and frankly, what with the way the Iron Curtain was shaping up we had no reason to believe we'd ever meet anyone Polish. My own mother, fully half Jew, loved to tell jokes created largely to advance the German annihilation of ethnic minorities. This has always been the way of lazy humor - find an easy target that can't fight back and dehumanize it. Unfortunately for the lazy, the more global our society becomes the fewer defenseless targets you will find. This is undoubtedly why I didn't learn what a "beaner" was until I moved out of state - where I grew up, the Chicanos had a culture an easy 200 years older than the Gringos and while they were a long way from dominant, they were a long way from accepting white people's bullshit. Making fun of black people? Very off the table. Making fun of Native Americans? Yeah no, we studied the hell out of their culture. Persecuted Eastern European minorities? Might as well pick on the Martians. There's a big, primitive swath of humanity that defines itself by what it is not. If you read Graeber, he'll argue that most societies define themselves in opposition of the cultures around them rather than in terms of their internal commonalities. The less tribal we become the more inclusive, but the less tribal we become the less room there is for Dave Chappelle's humor.
In 2003-ish, there was a pretty big market for cheaply printed joke books in Poland, and one month they printed Black jokes. Someone objected to it as offensive, so they reprinted a find-and-replace version with same material, but this time about Blue people. I guess it's both the proof and a show of just how lazy comedy can be.When I grew up there was one form of deprecatory humor that was safe, no matter what: Polack jokes. [...] Persecuted Eastern European minorities? Might as well pick on the Martians.
Haha but I mean Don Rickles' golden era was, like, the Cuban Missile Crisis. That's back when everyone was amazed by Lucille Ball not because she was a genius but because she was a girl. Here's Don Rickles-era Richord Pryor: Don Rickles was a white man who picked on white men because American society consisted entirely of white men and don't you forget it. The context has very much shifted since then, and this is A Good Thing, no matter what the conservatives say.
I'm saying that the milieu in which Don Rickles operated was, culturally, a million miles from now. Don Rickles was closer in time to Amos & Andy than we are to Pinkie & The Brain. Don Rickles was doing stand-up while Lenny Bruce was being arrested. While Carlin was doing Seven Dirty Words. Don Rickles was famous before Adam Sandler was born. I'm saying Don Rickles is not relevant to the discussion, because the age of Don Rickles' humor is as relevant to humor today as the flying era of Amelia Earhart is to Kobe Bryant's crash.