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Originally Posted by Yamer
If that's what he planned then it pretty well worked. If you Google him or his special right now it's a barrage of articles talking about 5 minutes of a 60 minute special. The people that want to read those articles likely won't be watching the special, of course, but he's getting attention.
This wasn't his best, IMO, but it got back to the jokier side of Chappelle's stand-up and I think a lot of people were hoping for that. I'm an anomaly in that I thought The Closer was outstanding. It's probably the closest he's got to 90s Carlin, which is my personal pinnacle of stand-up. His earlier work entertained me more, but The Closer hit a deeper level.
While I'm a fan there is this troubling pattern emerging about Chappelle where he seems to simultaneously be the most and least self-aware rich person. The right is also glomming on to comedians like him and Bill Burr as some beacon of free speech against woke cancel culture, consuming their content like a sermon rather than comedy.
Where Burr makes it clear he's calling everyone out for their stupidity, Dave is content shrugging his shoulders, or rubbing them up against guys like Elon Musk. He's always relied on his audience to be smart enough to hear what he's saying while at the same time chastising everyone for how stupid they are. Chappelle is becoming a bit of a troll and it gets harder for me to defend his art when his character can be so confusing.
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It was really hard for me to figure out what was going on with him. He has a genuine point, in that black people in America simply aren't being provided with the opportunities and aren't making the progress they should. While other groups are progressing beyond black Americans.
At time, it did seem like he was genuinely stressing this point. It also seemed like he was genuinely hurt by what happened to Daphne Dorman.
However, the amount of time he spent focusing on the issue pushed his act more towards bullying of LGTBQ people and pandering to the right, whether intentional or not.
I saw his last show live, and was really hoping he'd move on, but instead focused a disproportionate amount of time on the issue.