Dave Chappelle has always been a comedian known for pushing boundaries and speaking his truth through comedy. But it’s no laughing matter when his words get used for the wrong things and now, he’s speaking out about it.
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As you probably remember, within the last five years the veteran comedian has been all over the country and our streaming services for his various comedy specials. However, in 2021 specifically, he came under fire for his then-controversial Netflix stand-up “The Closer” due to jokes that many felt were transphobic.
In the aftermath of “The Closer’s” release, the comedian was called out by the National Black Justice Coalition and GLAAD for his “lazy and hostile transphobia and homophobia”-laced jokes. Trans employees of Netflix and their allies also staged a walkout as Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos seemingly doubled down in his support for the comedian and not his employees.
Chappelle later said he was ready to come to the table with a listening ear for those trans employees and the broader community, but clarified that he wouldn’t “bend to anyone’s demands.”
And in moves he perhaps didn’t expect at the time, he became an unofficial and unintentional speakerphone for the Republican Party who used his jokes to further amplify their outward disdain towards the trans community.
Now, looking back on that time in a new interview with NPR, he’s taking aim at the political party for “weaponizing” his jokes about the trans community and taking them the wrong way.
“I did resent that the Republican Party ran on transgender jokes. You know, I felt like they were doing a weaponized version of what I was doing. That’s not what I was doing,” Chappelle said. “I’ll give you an example, before I learned the phrase, ‘I respectfully decline,’ I was on Capitol Hill, and everybody ran up to take pictures with me from every congressional office. And I just take pictures with whoever asked. I didn’t ask how they vote or what their voting record is.”
He went on to explain how he started off taking pictures with people from the CBC when Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert suddenly asks to take one. Instead of declining, Chappelle obliged and then later saw her post their photo on social media with the caption reading something to the effect of, “Just two people that know that it’s just two genders.’”
“[She] just instantly, like, weaponized or politicized. So I got to the arena, and I lit her ass up for doing that. And she should never do that to a person like me,” Chappelle told the outlet.
And while his feelings may be valid, here’s the thing that he’s failing to see. If they were never given the jokes to play off of in the first place, there wouldn’t be anything to “weaponize.” Had he not made the trans community the butt of his jokes and centered them during a time when their plight and fight for advocacy was already fodder for derogatory and discriminatory discourse by the Republican party—he probably wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.
Let’s not forget that even without the added fuel from Republicans, Chappelle’s words had already done enough damage on their own and spawned backlash without their help. It honestly feels as if he’s trying to shift the blame here.
And for someone who’s previously said that “comedians have a responsibility to speak recklessly” and that “the funniest thing to say is mean,” him trying to low key accuse others of taking his words, flipping them and reversing them into something he didn’t intend seems disingenuous. You said what you said, right? Stand on it and be prepared to deal with whatever comes on the back end of it.
If you’re gonna talk about how things transpired back then, you’ve got to tell the full story. Pointing the finger at the Republicans after it was blatantly clear that the majority of folks weren’t rocking with what you said and called you out about it before they even got involved is giving them too much credit and shirking off way too much personal responsibility. You can’t give someone ammo then feign surprise when they shoot. That’s not how this works.
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