Netflix Won’t Take Down Dave Chappelle Special, Ted Sarandos Says

There are some other comedians who would decide to make the joke as cruel as possible and start insulting people who get offended. The joke then becomes about how much they can attack those people and make them part of the outgroup. Those people are probably permanently lost as fans unless the comedian decides to change their methods.

For some reason this conversation frequently happens in terms of "public discourse" and "rights" but it all seems to be centered around a very small group of people, and nobody really wants to talk about the series of individual actions that led to this point.

These are usually gamed by culture warriors - positively and negatively. They are virtue signalling support not commenting on the quality of the work.

I say this as someone who is A) hugely supportive of trans rights, B) thought the special is not worthy of the vitriol it is getting - though it surely does have a lot of blind spots, and C) pretty mediocre as far as standup comedy specials go.

I'm a huge Dave Chapelle fan. I've watched and re-watched all of his specials up to now. But Sticks and Stones and The Closer are both multiple notches below his usual high standards. They will not be remembered positively as far as having anything worthwhile to say about society or being funny.

One thing I noted is that in 2 different performances stuff he seems to “come up with on the fly” was actually carefully writen and performed. The audience Q&A at the end was probably the best part.

It was hard to tell (for me at least) when he was being serious and when he was pushing the limits on things because he could..

Parker Molloy wrote a piece about how "The Closer" isn't transphobic, just tired and unfunny. In it, they quote another comedian asking, "oh, so we can just steal edgy jokes from Reddit now?" That about sums the whole thing up.

You saw/heard/etc. something you consider abhorrent ( e.g. shout racial slurs at a teenage footballer, sexually assaulted someone, etc.). You can't believe such people exist, and can't even remotely relate to them. You're pissed, terrified that those people exist and they seem to suffer no consequences for their actions. So what do you do? Good old boycotts.

I think that the whole thing ( "cancel culture" ) is overblown, on both sides of it. There are absolutely terrible people who should just shut up and be deservedly ostracized for their abhorrent actions, but it sometimes goes too far for too little; and on the other hand people who scream "free speech" when a bigot gets fired for shouting racial slurs aren't helping anyone and make themselves look sympathetic to said bigot.

*Citation needed