By any standard, Dave Chappelle has been one of the most talented and provocative comics in America, and indeed the world, over the last two and a half decades. He never “went Hollywood” and continues to live with his wife and children on a farm in Yellow Springs, OH where he was partially raised by his father, when he wasn’t in Washington, D.C. living with his mother, a professor at Howard University. He’s said that he never wanted to be anything else but a comic.
Shakespeare once wrote, “Ah, the comic, now there’s a dangerous man.” Indeed, the truths that incisive comics hit us with can prove dangerous to comfortable and regimented thinking. Their job is to make us uncomfortable by speaking truths we previously avoided looking squarely at.
The profession is one of the world’s oldest, owing its origins to the court jester, a dude that often put his life on the line in pursuit of truth. His “job” ostensibly was to keep the king and the members of his court amused by his antics, but his real job was to puncture the king’s over-inflated ego, especially when the monarch issued an edict that would negatively impact his subjects.
While everyone else at court could only grin and go along with whatever the king said, the court jester would make sly snide remarks, speaking truth and criticizing what the king said — albeit half under his breath but still loud enough for everyone at court to hear. When challenged by the king in regards to his remarks, his response was that he must have been misheard, misunderstood or that he was only joking.
The jester’s goal was to cause the king to rethink, alter or abandon laws that were unjust or imposed a hardship on his subjects, and sometimes it worked. However, if he went too far with is jesting he could incur the wrath of the king — and even get his head cut off in the process. History informs us there never were a lot of people queuing up for the court jester’s job.
But back to Dave Chappelle. His sketch comedy show, which ran from to 2003-2005, shot him to the top of the heap of the comic world. His skit about an elderly blind black man who thought that he was white and therefore became a member of the Ku Klux Klan was devastating commentary on racial hatred in America.
After two seasons of the wildly successful show, he refused to continue to do it for another season, in spite of being offered $50 million. His principled stance — his producers were trying to force him to do material he wasn’t comfortable with — of walking away caused the Hollywood rumor machine to go into overtime. He was by turns addicted, crazy or a member of some Black Nationalist cult.
Nonetheless, he was well-received when he returned to the comic stage in 2006 after an extended trip to Africa. He was again at the top of his game and everyone was placing him among the best comics of all time.
However, once he signed a $20 million per show deal with Netflix, Chappelle began punching down instead of up. Like every other American, he knows the subjects we’re sensitive about, so instead of thinking up new, incisive material, he now simply makes fun of gays, rapists and pushes other cheap hot buttons.
But to my mind, he crossed the line with his comments on Michael Jackson.
During his recently released special “Sticks and Stones,” he alternately states that Jackson didn’t rape any children, but if he did, the children should be proud of it. If he truly believes Jackson to be innocent, then he is not as smart as I previously thought that he was, and if he doesn’t believe it but is pretending to simply to pick low hanging fruit, then he’s too lazy for my attention.
What Chappelle is actually doing is daring his public not to like his work, challenging them to turn on him if they dare. He’s basically saying that he’s so rich, so famous and so talented that he can shit all over his audiences and get away with it.
Sorry, no one is THAT good. ’Bye Dave.
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.
One Response to “MANSFIELD: Bye Dave”
Bill R
Wife and I had the exact same response after watching the show.