Said Dave Chappelle, appearing on the supremely unfunny TV show "PBS NewsHour." Here, watch the whole thing:
I found that via Matt Wilstein at The Daily Beast:
There is nothing inherently wrong with using stand-up comedy to comment on the #MeToo movement... But it of course depends on the nature of that material and whether it serves to downplay the severity of systematic sexual abuse.ALSO: The PBS segment included a portion of an old Chappelle sketch, "The Racial Draft." It made me want to see the whole thing, so here it is:
Before Chappelle started talking about Louis C.K. in his act, he was telling jokes about Bill Cosby, a man he always considered to be a personal “hero.” In his 2017 special The Age of Spin, he attempted to weigh Cosby’s then “alleged” rapes against his otherwise positive legacy. “My God, you can’t imagine,” Chappelle joked, grappling with his own feelings. “It’d be as if you heard that chocolate ice cream itself had raped 54 people.”...
In the PBS interview, he recalled watching one of Cosby’s victims sobbing outside the courtroom after he was found guilty. “Justice was meted out for this woman. And it didn’t look gleeful. You know what I mean?” he said. “Like, it’s tough to see your heroes fall, let alone be a villain. I was explaining to some of my younger family members, like, who he was at one point, juxtaposed to what’s happened now. It’s astounding. And it’s sad, for everybody.”
Posts
29 comments:
It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing.. Richard Feynman
His best bits are the Black KKK member and his Rick James impersonation.
Brilliant. I've never seen that before.
Quite funny. Also it's a joke about intersectionality. You don't see many jokes about that now. Could be updated by having a police raid for stereotyping and hurtful speech.
Quite funny. Also it's a joke about intersectionality. You don't see many jokes about that now. Could be updated by having a police raid for stereotyping and hurtful speech.
I have had extensive training as of lately, due to the fact that 20 years ago, someone who made it to high leadership boffed a younger subordinate and then got her a choice job. It was all revealed in the me too movement, and HR decided to diversify the training to include all transgressions of thought, touch or speech.
The long and short of it: He can't say that! Especially if it is funny.
I thought at first you were defending Trump's word salads again--nobody really wants precision, etc.
The racial draft is hilarious. Do blacks really want Billy Clinton?
Not caring about #metoo still isn't an option.
Actually, people will line up around the world to see someone speak precisely and carefully. Jordan Peterson
There is nothing inherently wrong ...But it of course depends on the nature of that material and whether it serves to downplay the severity of systematic sexual abuse.
Matt Wilstein's mother might agree that it's inherently wrong to not share Matt Wilstein's opinion about a trivial fad.
That Chappelle bit was in 2004. Little did he know of a man, fathered by a dark skinned foreigner but raised by white mother and grandmother from White as can be Kansas but with formative years in Muslim Malaysia and multi-ethnic Hawaii.
He would drafted by the Blacks. And as he first said in high school
“Wait....what? I’m black!?”
PS If this skit were redone in 2018 they would traded Kanye West to the whites.
“I don’t think people pay money to see a guy speak precisely and carefully. I don’t think they want to pay to see somebody worried about the repercussions of what they say . . . They just want to see someone try to get at something honest or maybe something relatable, to have some fun with something."
They do. Progs don't. Nuff said.
To have some fun with something is NOT FUNNY.
That looks like Bill Burr on the right, when he still had his hair.
Reading the headline, I thought for sure he was describing a Trump rally.
chocolate ice cream itself had raped 54 people.
I can't remember the story, but Cosby spoke of smearing himself with ice cream and becoming the most beautiful chocolate sundae you've ever seen.
The post above, on suspicions that Hillary is running again, compared to this one, about Chapelle making a rare appearance and discussing comedy, is saddening to me.
I'd rather have a week of Chapelle than a minute of Hillary, and so would everyone in the whole damn world, even those who want to buy her a way into the Oval Office so they can sell the US.
I can understand his divided feelings about Bill Cosby. There's more to Bill Cosby's legacy than his rape conviction. I wonder if Chappelle can extend any sympathy to those who still wish to honor their Confederate ancestors.......There's more to the legacy of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison than the fact that they owned slaves. A good part of that legacy is that they helped to create an ethos that made enslaving people seem like such an abomination. In this, they were ahead of Mohammed, Maimonides, and several early Church fathers who taught about the ethical way to treat slaves rather than the ethics of owning slaves.
Chappelle avails himself of the exclusive privilege given to hip, black comedians of the ability to make fun of the kind of black people who would cause Obama's grandmother to clutch her purse tightly. Maxine Waters still remains sacrosanct, but one can get in a few digs at Condeleeza Rice.
That skit is among my 5 or 10 most favorite comedy pieces.
Race is precise and careful-speak.
It's a diversity draft or dd... when rotated 180 is PP.
Well, that was a surprise. I was certain the black delegation would pick Clinton, the first "black" president. Can Obama sing the blues? He probably doesn't even own a saxophone. And Tiger... Golf? Really?
Powell acts white and advanced because of... What else? White privilege. He is the quintessential white guy... person... whatever.
Oh, wait, it's a diversity draft. Let's go to the judges. He acts white while donning a black skin. Throw a tire on him. He's white for purposes of social progress. Does NYT, WaPo, CNN, BBC, The Root, The Beast, concur? Yes. Okay, Powell is officially, if not actually, white. You've been demoted, Powell.
Wu Tang clan could pass for Thai. Chinese? Perhaps in Hong Kong.
Man! Love Chappell's audacity for the truth, like a fave of mine, Richard Pryor.
“It’d be as if you heard that chocolate ice cream itself had raped 54 people.”...
Isn't one of the most wonderfully offensive thing about that joke is using the phrase "chocolate ice cream" to describe a black man? But it's about Bill Cosby! You're supposed to offend him. Except you won't offend him. You'll offend everyone else.
I love that sketch. One of the funniest. The two white guys with the secret handshake.
“I don’t think people pay money to see a guy speak precisely and carefully. I don’t think they want to pay to see somebody worried about the repercussions of what they say."
At first I thought maybe this was follow-up to the post of a couple of days ago about making sense of Trump rallies. Other than "paying money" instead of "spending time," it fits perfectly.
What he did was awful but the crime that got him in trouble was going off the reservation. If was as much a raving lefty as Harry Belafonte, he'd still be a free man.
Post a Comment