OFF-TOPIC: All the Rage
Dave Chappelle has just released his latest stand-up special on Netflix, Sticks & Stones.  This stand-up special comes after four other comedy specials that have been beleaguered with criticism over Chappelle’s material about the LGBTQ+ community, particularly transgender people, and about the women who accused Louis CK of sexual misconduct.  And Sticks & Stones has attracted just as much controversy as any of Chappelle’s other Netflix specials if not more.
And that’s by design.
The special opens up with this quote from Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA”
Tell me somethin’ / You mothafuckas can’t tell me nothin’ / I’d rather die than to listen to you…
In Sticks & Stones, Dave Chappelle sets himself up as some kind of defiant martyr fighting the good fight against so-called “cancel culture” or any moral busybodies who get offended by any jokes he or any of his other comedian friends might have told at any point.  Many of those who express praise and enthusiasm towards Sticks & Stones defend it on similar grounds, writing off any criticism of it as people being “too sensitive”, “offended”, and “trying to cancel Dave Chappelle”.
Enough dancing around the subject.  I found the special really tired and juvenile.  What he’s doing here is thumbing his nose at any critic who had dared to take issue with anything he has said in his prior Netflix special in a way that eschews the thoughtfulness that Chappelle is capable of for petulance.  That might have been okay if it was funny regardless, but I didn’t think it was.  A better version of what Chappelle tried to do here was more than 30 years ago, in Eddie Murphy: Raw.  Eddie Murphy opened up this special complaining about criticism he got for his last special from Mr. T, Michael Jackson, and the gay community with much funnier jokes.  The crescendo of this bit was his brilliant story of Bill Cosby calling him on the phone to browbeat him about his foul language.
A bunch of the critics praising Sticks & Stones are calling it revelatory and a breath of fresh air in this moment of time.  Really?  All this is is Chappelle’s version of “PC gone mad” in response to criticism, which is not a novel concept.  Carlos Mencia’s whole shtick 15 years ago was to crack jokes using racial stereotypes and then spend the next ten minutes guilt tripping the audience into laughing by expressing faux-martyrdom aggrievement over “political correctness” or “sensitivity”.  This is as cliche a comedy staple as “take my wife, please”.  Other comedians who have gone this exact same angle include Jerry Seinfeld, Roseanne Barr, Larry the Cable Guy, Ricky Gervais, Bill Maher, Chris Rock, Andrew Dice Clay, Lil Duval, Jim Norton, Patrice O’Neal, Nick DaPaolo, Joe Rogan, Doug Stanhope, Rob Schneider, Lisa Lampanelli, Eddie Griffin, John Cleese, George Carlin, Aziz Ansari, Sarah Silverman, DL Hughley, Tracy Morgan, Adam Carolla, Amy Schumer, Tim Allen, Aries Spears, Russell Peters, Redd Foxx, Dennis Miller, Mike Epps, Patton Oswalt, Jeff Dunham, Sam Kinison, and Louis CK just to name a few.
Despite this being a cliche, I think taking the angle Dave Chappelle took here is more expedient for himself than ever.  A part of the reason is because our society has become more politically polarizing than ever.  A lot of the discourse around Sticks & Stones falls along politically partisan lines (yes, I know that includes myself too).  Most of the people defending Dave Chappelle so ardently are right-wing pundits/publications like Breitbart, Dana Loesch, and Gavin McInnes and most of the people criticizing Chappelle are liberal/pro-LGBTQ+ publications.  Chappelle and his defenders are using this special as a denouncing of “cancel culture”.  I hate that term and I hate the framing around it even more because it’s so vaguely defined other than the fact that it’s nakedly partisan.  The screeds against “cancel culture” are not so subtle digs at the left and reinforce a narrative that the left wants to censor everything and that the right are the true defenders of free speech and free expression.  It’s weird that the “cancel culture” designation never applies when the right-wing gets upset about Nike, Gillette, or Keurig coffee makers.
I think a better name for all of this is “outrage culture” and it’s nonpartisan.  So much of our public discourse is handled on social media, particularly Twitter, that rewards shorter and more attention-grabbing hot takes over lengthy, nuanced analysis.  And one of the easiest ways to grab attention is by being outrageous or inflammatory.  In response, online publications of all political stripes write their headlines in inflammatory ways that grab attention in order to be shared on social media.  Even if the actual article has more nuance to it, most people don’t read past the splashy headline anyway.  In regards to politics, it has further defined people, whatever their personal views may be, in reaction to what they aren’t or what they disagree with.  It’s partially why so many people have blamed things like the 2016 Ghostbusters film or Star Wars: The Last Jedi as the reason they voted for Trump or why they’ll vote for Trump again.  It’s also why so many of the people praising Sticks & Stones so zealously have attempted to use it as a rallying cry for Trump and Trumpism.  This also goes for any liberals who expressed a desire to buy Nikes or Gillette razors after the right-wing meltdown over them.
Sticks & Stones was a rallying cry to anybody that has defined themselves or their politics to being anti-politically correct (which isn’t only right-wingers, but largely encompasses right-wingers) to look to Dave Chappelle as a hero to wrap themselves around.  I felt the same way about Louis CK’s stand-up “comeback” where he mocked school shooting survivors, millenials, and non-binary kids.  CK was hugely popular on college campuses and liberal crowds despite never being “politically correct”.  He was also often very thoughtful in the way he towed that fine line when tackling touchy subjects.  But in light of his sexual misconduct scandal, he must have figured that he permanently burned a bridge with that crowd so he pivoted to a crowd that doesn’t care that he sexually harassed multiple women.  This same crowd also tends not to think too highly of the Parkland shooting survivors for their gun control activism or trans and non-binary people.
The thing is, Dave Chappelle and Louis CK don’t give a damn about any of these right-wingers or their pro-Trump causes.  They’re just looking out for number one.  Breitbart wouldn’t write fawning articles about Chappelle if the focus was on him expressing discomfort over a white person’s laughter over a blackface sketch he was doing on his show.  They wouldn’t rally around Louis CK either if he was still telling jokes expressing confusion as to why women would want to date men based off violence against women statistics.  Conversely, Nike and Gillette don’t actually give a damn about putting an end to police brutality or toxic masculinity.  If they were to discover that they could make more money off of using “Blue Lives Matter” sentiment or objectifying women, they would do it in a heartbeat.  This is all this whole shit is.
I suppose that’s ultimately the joke in all of this.  I don’t find it very funny, but I suppose I’m just too sensitive, right?









