"As a comedian, he’s sick of it — and, as the audience response revealed, they — we! — are too. Chappelle did his job; now it’s time for us to do ours. It’s time to stop pretending we’re offended when we’re not, and it’s time to speak up against the loud, self-righteous, whiny few. Speech doesn’t belong only to them."
Writes Katherine Timpf in "Defiant Dave Chappelle" (National Review).
Key concept: A lot of the offense on display is phony — put on by people who are afraid of being thought ill of. I'd say those weasels shouldn't be running the culture. They're worse than the authentically sensitive folks who are really and truly offended.
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Speaking of weasels, the NYT did s puff piece on Cardinal Comey and his singular mission to rid the country of Trump.
I thought a majority of the audience looked uncomfortable. Check out the front row. Talk about squirming in their seats.
If you have any sort of values at all - conservative, liberal, feminist, MRA, whatever - then you WILL be offended by some of the things in Chapelle's new special. And that's GOOD! It's good to realize that the world doesn't agree with you 100% and that listening to an opposing view, even an offensive view, won't cause you to turn into a pile of salt or melt like witch in Wizard of Oz. Maybe you'll rethink some of your views -and maybe you won't - that's up to each audience member.
"Ohio is an ancient Indian word for 'land of poor white people'". Brutal - but only brutal because of the truth of the post-industrial rustbelt and the opioid epidemic. Dave didn't cause those. In fact, he's reminding coastal Whites that these problems exist, and he's reminding Blacks that "white privilege" or whatever you call it is not in fact a universal condition among Whites. In that he is doing the job that the MSM won't do. He's a fucking national hero!
I was making a somewhat related point to a friend of mine about gay marriage the other day. I much prefer someone who legitimately opposes same-sex marriage on religious or moral grounds than a person like Obama, who believed in it but claimed not to because it was too politically polarizing an issue at the time, and then as soon as the numbers started moving in its favor, he "evolved" on the issue. Pathetic opportunism that doesn't require an ounce of moral courage.
Chappelle is on to something totally comedic.The PC crowd are about as funny as it gets. The blame for them goes to the Marxist College Professors who made PC insanity into a requirement for students to stay in school and graduate.
Timpf wants comedians to have the opportunity to say things for a laugh and, presumably, to earn money, and not be "canceled" in response. That doesn't do much for the average person who has to watch what he says and does because he might lose his job if he tells the wrong joke at the wrong time.
Maybe comedians need to come up with something outside of the Richard Pryor / Lenny Bruce / George Carlin model of comedy, figure out what will make us laugh without resorting to the obviously controversial. It seems like those jokes are the low hanging fruit.
I watched his last special. Sure the right took some hits. But the left was skewered too. Frankly I suspect it was a lot easier to find something to poke fun of on the left,a target rich environment as it were.
A skill lost on, or suppressed by, the writers for the late night shows.
Blogger J. Farmer @ 7:37 AM:
One of the many reasons I like J. Farmer.
I might not agree with him from time to time, but I always appreciate someone who views cutting through the bullshit as a way to get to what matters: find a core honesty, and then argue about policy..
And he can be dryly funny. Which is especially tough in written form.
I am Laslo.
@Farmer, just a footnote. Trump was in favor of gay marriage at a time when it was still controversial in the LGBT community and some (c.f., Andrew Sullivan) we’re strongly opposed. Yet gays still hate him. Go figure.
I think that comedians like Chapelle want to compel laughter, to bypass their listener's rational censor and get deep inside them and make them laugh.
He, and comedians like him, disdain applause as a response to their jokes. Applause means "yes, you said something brave and I agree with it."
Laughter means "You MADE me laugh!" and that's what comedians want.
Woke comedians want applause.
"It’s time to stop pretending we’re offended when we’re not, and it’s time to speak up against the loud, self-righteous, whiny few."
Well, isn't that nice. But according to the Universal Theory of Progressive Instrumentalism, offense is a tool. The pretense is the point. Thou shalt obey.
"Key concept: A lot of the offense on display is phony — put on by people who are afraid of being thought ill of."
Sure, a little cowardice and conformism is involved. But the display is a power play.
"I'd say those weasels shouldn't be running the culture."
It's such a nice sentiment. But the kulture kommissars laugh at your bourgeois sensibilities, knowing that, when it matters, you and the Althouses of America will still read The New York Times and The New Yorker, and still vote for Dems cuz women's bodies. They count on timid women not standing in the way.
"If you have any sort of values at all - conservative, liberal, feminist, MRA, whatever - then you WILL be offended by some of the things in Chapelle's new special."
Honest question: at this point, can conservatives actually be offended?
I mean, we are used to prog derision, we know we are deplorable, we see through their phony outrage, we anticipate their smug condescension, we resist their maneuvers in the culture war, we shrug at their boring predictability, we have grown callouses. So: what offense? In a show?
NBA’s actions with China have shown this...
> A lot of the offense on display is phony
Tip of the cap to Kat Timpf for another good column.
I disliked “critics” way before they turned into social justice gatekeepers. They bring nothing of value to the conversation and to the extent that they throttle comedy and comedians, that is a net negative for us as a culture.
It’s funny and ironic how the SJWs have replaced the “Christian right” as the cultural scolds. How did that happen?
They're worse than the authentically sensitive folks who are really and truly offended.
Nope. The worst are the sensitive folks who are really and truly offended. There's hope for the weasels, because they're weasels. But the really and truly offended: no hope. They need to be put down.
I saw "cancel culture" firsthand a long time ago. And I told those people to blow it out their respective ears. That ended that.
We have power over ourselves. If people exert power over us it is usually power we have given them. Chappelle is telling the "cancel culture" morons have no power. And he's giving them none.
PS: Yes this is an argument in favor of the Second Amendment.
I much prefer someone who legitimately opposes same-sex marriage on religious or moral grounds. . . ."
Well, that would be me. So, we've got that going for us.
Greg Gutfeld’s weekend show really is one of the funniest political TV shows. Trump is obviously a fan, at one of his rallies listing off FNC hosts, using double names for everyone, except for “Greg”. The left media, of course, thinks his show is horrid. Full of hate, etc. Timpf and Tyrus are his regulars, along with two others, last night including Mark Steyn. Gutfeld runs down the four “guests” expecting a funny quip from each. First segment (A Block) he runs them in order. After that, he keeps them hopping.
Timpf comes across as a neurotic, slightly dorky, self involved pixie, who can’t find a date (while all her friends are getting married). She sits next to massive Tyrus, a former professional wrestler, at the very end, in his private recliner. She comes across as a complete ditz, but it turns out that she has a BA in English from Hillsdale, Magna cum Laude. Last night, as usual, the two of them get into it. Always funny, esp given the difference in sizes (his ring weight (375) was probably almost 4 times hers). I think that both do political stand up comedy, as well as Gutfeld, and Steyn last night. Which of course, is why the left hates the show, and hates the regular participants, esp Gutfeld and Timpf (Tyrus is POC). Last night she went after Greg, about his ego (esp after Trump had just used “Greg”, presumably because everyone at the rally would know who he was without his last name). She also does some of the skits for the show (one of his buddies from Redeye did the one last night playing a very good Pencil Neck Schiff).
Point here is that I had read her articles for several years, and didn’t quite know how to take her. But that changed after watching her on Fox quite a bit. She calls herself a Libertarian. But she is also a stand up comedian. Which means that some of what she says in her articles is political comedy. Part of it is her comedic character. But if you watch her enough, you also realize that under that is a serious political observer. This article was one of her better ones, since she dialed down her comedic side, and instead used her experiences as a comedian in making her points.
BTW, if you want to see what she is talking about, look up the Wikipedia articles on both Timpf and the Greg Gutfeld show. I haven’t seen so much heavily biased editing there in years.
“Chappelle is on to something totally comedic.The PC crowd are about as funny as it gets. The blame for them goes to the Marxist College Professors who made PC insanity into a requirement for students to stay in school and graduate.”
I think that Timpf may be one of the few millennials who was spared this, by going to Hillsdale.
Some people take offense like Coleridge took opium - for inspiration - and with much the same effect: the man takes the drug, the drug takes the drug, the drug takes the man.
I much prefer someone who legitimately opposes same-sex marriage on religious or moral grounds. . . ."
Sigh.
Yeah, but I'd much prefer someone who legitimately characterizes people's positions on the issues. In the case of "same-sex marriage," the objection is ontological. Even "religious [and] moral grounds" are grounded in ontology, that is, the objective nature of marriage. (Same with so-called "transgender" ideology.)
This isn't news. It's just that some people refuse to listen or give credence to the other side.
Sorry to be nit-picky. On your main point, I fully agree. I respect progressives/leftists/Dems much more than I do the Republican Establishment types.
Did Kit Kat's review address the many, many jokes at the expense of white racism in Dave Chappelle's special?
Did she comment on Chappelle's technique of humorously minimizing the social struggles of disaffected groups by comparing them to hundreds of years of discrimination against black men?
I saw the show, and thought it was a tour de force of equal opportunity satire. It focused on the ridiculous excesses of both the left and right who are blinded by ideology to the fact of their common humanity, IMO. But then, I've always liked Dave, and seen his comedy as guided by warmth and hopefulness for the possibilities of the human condition. I think Chappelle likes people, and doesn't lean on labels.
To describe his special as a takedown of "cancel culture" (as though cancel culture is some new phenomenon of recent vintage) is to view the subject matter through a different bias than PC bias.
Roger Ailes was accused of a lot of horrible things, and one was hiring a lot of blonde bimbos. Except that a lot of them turned out to be brainiacs. I first really noticed that with Megyn Kelly. Her replacement (Laura Ingraham) is worse - she was one of Justice Thomas’ former clerks. For those of you who aren’t lawyers, that is a really really big thing. Every year there are maybe 50k new law school grads across the country. And every Supreme Court Justice gets three new clerks. 27 SCOTUS clerks out of 50k LS grads (actually, a year or two delayed, but equivalent steady state). Eugene Volokh (another SCOTUS clerk) would call it top 5%% (or more traditionally, top .05% of law school grads).
I wondered how Kat Timpf fit in there. Yes, she is blonde. But otherwise, she didn’t seem the type. Too scrawny. Too cra cra. Too weird. But the Hillsdale magna cum laude suggests some brains under her ditzy exterior.
Jeff Brokaw said...
It’s funny and ironic how the SJWs have replaced the “Christian right” as the cultural scolds. How did that happen?
I've always found it fascinating that the American Left seems so worried about what I can only term 'purity of the soul'. I keep wondering if I slept through part of PoliSci 101 and missed something about sturdy Soviet Valkyries mounted on tractors, swooping down to collect the souls of the ideologically pure and carrying them off to an eternal job at the state-owned cosmoline factory in the sky.
I much prefer someone who legitimately opposes same-sex marriage on religious or moral grounds. . . .
Fitness. Normalization. Not just homomarriage, but all marriage in the transgender spectrum, and especially political congruence ("="). Civil unions for all consenting adults. However, if we progress with liberalization, then stop the #Judgments, #TooManyLabels, the exquisite bigotry. Lose your Pro-Choice quasi-religion ("ethics"). Social justice (i.e. appeals to empathy, relativistic) anywhere is injustice everywhere. #HateLovesAbortion
I think that Timpf may be one of the few millennials who was spared this, by going to Hillsdale.
I used to believe in Hillsdale's reputation. Then I read several pieces by Hillsdale grads over at The Federalist. Suffice to say I've not been impressed.
I wish the good Mark would identify xitself more obviously.
Original Mike agrees.
As much as Bill Maher disgusts me, I have to credit him with helping launch the moniker "feigned outrage" [also second-hand outrage?] about the unserious (but still toxic) for-show pitchforks over the slightest whiff of unwokeness ("virtue signaling")
Cancel -- another euphemism -- culture a.k.a. abortion culture. Wicked.
I saw and enjoyed the Chappelle show. It didn't strike me as all that politically incorrect. He said some nice things about Michael Jackson. Big deal. Here's the most important and salient fact about Michael Jackson: he's dead. If you appreciate and enjoy his music, you're not giving your support to pedophiles or subsidizing Michael's next molestation theme park. Jackson's dead and his sins are buried with him.....Chappelle also said some nice things about Louis CK. Well, Louis is still alive and presumably still jerking off. Most likely he's learned his lesson about not jerking off in front of casual acquaintances and now restricts his activities to only very close friend and intimates. There's no denying the guy is a bit of a perv. If you find him objectionable, don't attend his shows. But shouldn't you show his fans the same respect that is offered to opponents and supporters of gay marriage. I'm not a particular fan of Louis CK, but how much opprobrium should be directed at a comedian who masturbates in front of Sarah Silverman......What I'd really like to see is Chappelle deliver a witty put down of all those scumbags who gave a standing ovation to Roman Polanski, but then, of course, his career would be truly over. You don't fuck with Meryl Streep.
I guess now the media will refer to her as Katheryn Drimph.
Chapelle's a joke thief. Stole it from a comedian fired by his agency and denied other opportunities, inverting and subverting the original. He's propped up opposition, well evidenced by the fake opposition known as National Review giving us a lame explainer.
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