My Thoughts on Dave Chappelle

He’s my favorite comedian of all time but he’s guilty of the same thing that caused him to leave “Chappelle Show.”

Garfield Hylton

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Dave Chappelle (photo captured by John Bauld)

*This is not a critique, review, or analysis of his latest special. I’m speaking directly about the comments I’ve heard ABOUT the special in the context of Dave’s most recent comedic output*

Dave Chapelle is my favorite comedian of all time. He and Chris Rock were 1a and 1b…then Dave did his monologue about George Floyd and took the top spot.

I went to see Dave’s live show at the Hard Rock in Ft. Lauderdale in August. When I left the show, I thought to myself, “that’s not the Dave I remember from my early adulthood.”

In life, people change. I understood when Dave left Chappelle Show because he didn’t like how he felt White people responded to his comedy. It’s one thing to make jokes and think people are laughing WITH you. It’s a decidedly different thing to poke fun at Black things in White spaces then find out they’re laughing AT you.

I caught most of the feedback from people about his new special before I’d seen it. I opted out. The homie came by the crib and watched it in my living room while I was working in the living room. Which is to say, I didn’t watch the special but heard most of it in the background.

Many of the earlier parts were what I witnessed in August, but some new jokes were thrown in toward the end of the special. I might’ve laughed less than a handful of times.

What I always valued about Dave was his ability to make jokes about very serious things that left me laughing but also saying, “damn. That IS kinda fucked up…but he found a way to make it go down easier with a laugh.”
But as I’ve grown with my understanding of the LGBTQ community, and that’s not to say I’m anything close to being an expert, I most certainly understand their complaints.

Dave doesn’t seem to be making jokes “with” them. It’s mostly AT their expense. And I’m not of the mind to tell them they shouldn’t be offended by that, particularly when the jokes ain’t all that funny.

I think this is a situation where two things can be true.

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Garfield Hylton

Medium Creator Fellow. Award-winning TV news journalist. Freelance writer. Mad question asker.