Today’s #MinneHopeless smackdown on Dave Chappelle’s comedy by cancelling his gigs at First Avenue lit up my speech antennae. Maybe I should lay off the satire, explain it, and thereby, unfortunately, Kill the Funny.
Firstly, to backstop my credibility, I’ll say I know some trans people. We’re friends, I think (hope we still are), and I know some parents of trans people. Hope we still are friends, too. I don’t think anyone deserves wholesale mockery or derision, and if you believe an endorsement of Dave Chappelle or Ricky Gervais for that matter, constitutes that well, sorry to disappoint you. Chapelle’s support of fcuking Black Lives Matter offends me. He’s an equal opportunity offender. He offends Jews, blacks (Jussie Smollet), whites, women, Muslims, and probably a few dozen more groups.
Hint: comedy without offense isn’t Dave Chappelle. It’s Dad jokes. It’s not Richard Pryor. Not Lenny Bruce. Not Mrs. Maisel.
So where lies the difference between my appreciation for Dave Chappelle and free speech and my love of trans people? I refuse to virtue signal that they’re not diametrically opposed, but they’re not. Look at The Closer. If I recall correctly, he saved the most powerful, last poignant moment of the show for his late trans friend.
I’ll say it again: his comments on everyone ruffle my feathers. They make me uncomfortable and want to zip my lip. AS COMEDY SHOULD. WHERE WOULD WE BE WITHOUT JONATHAN SWIFT SUGGESTING WE SOLVE HUNGER BY EATING BABIES? I mean Jesus.
Also, I work with people, young ones, enduring life and death mental health crises in a locked psych ward who are among the most vulnerable in our world today. I do not wish ANY of my kids ill, and anyone who actually knows me, knows this. My classroom at Como Park High had a triangle on the door which I knew was bullshit, but I was a safe adult. And it is not to say that anyone contemplating suicide for any other reason unrelated to gender issues doesn’t have my utter compassion and wish to help, either.
As one who’s suffered a few years of galactic trauma, and multiple episodes of crippling depression myself, I’ll say, staying alive on this blue marble floating past the Webb telescope, this seemingly godforsaken, shot-up warzone in MinneHopeless is not easy.
We aren’t meant to be happy without working for it. There’s no magic path. We were lied to. No one owes us. It’s hard work to be even marginally content and not beaten up by the ghosts of your stupid fcuking failures in life.
Dave Chappelle ain’t the one. He’s not “unaliving” you with words of “literal violence.” (Unalive the verb is the term kids use to get around TikTok censorship for saying “kill.”) Direct your grievance towards a recommitment to make yourself a better hooman, the kind our pets think we are.
That’s it.