Dave chappelle

The American comedy world finds itself embroiled in a not-so-civil war of words over the Riyadh Comedy Festival, sponsored by the Saudi royal family. The Saudis have given enormous paychecks to big names like Kevin Hart, Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., Aziz Ansari, and Bill Burr.  On one side, you have the people invited to perform at the festival, who mostly lean toward the anti-woke, sometimes-semi-canceled, will-do-anything-for-a-dollar camp. On the other, you have hyper-woke, mostly male Gen X comics whose routines these days involve delivering panicked podcast screeds about the end of democracy.

It’s impossible to sugarcoat what Ye, The Artist Formerly Known as Kanye West, said that got him in hot water late in 2022. You can’t announce you are going to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE” and then act surprised when your conduct sparks a firestorm. After getting kicked off Twitter (though Elon Musk would later reinstate him), Ye was subsequently suspended from Instagram for posting an image of a message he sent to Russell Simmons in which he said, “I gotta get the Jewish business people to make the contracts fair.” Given the magnitude of Ye’s superstardom and his history of erratic behavior, this would have been a globe-spanning media event in any case.

Is Elon Musk losing his appeal? Cockburn concedes that being the richest man in the world must be pretty sweet. But, what if you were phenomenally unpopular at the same time? That’s Elon Musk. The Dave Chappelle show last night in San Francisco proved that. The comedian invited Twitter boss Musk to join him on stage. “Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world,” Chappelle said near the end of his set at the Chase Center. And the crowd did — most of them opting to loudly boo the billionaire. The booing only intensified as Musk wandered around onstage, pacing and waving, looking visibly embarrassed. The video, which was initially posted to Twitter, has since mysteriously been deleted. Ahem.  https://twitter.

Cockburn has always said that when the going gets tough, the tough gets going…to a bar. But when the going gets tough for giant corporations — in this case, “tough” meaning $50 billion in lost subscriptions for Netflix — companies tend to get going in whatever direction will induce the mob to keep paying for their goods and services. Netflix has done just that by updating its “corporate culture memo” to let employees know they may have to work on material that triggers them. And letting them know if they don’t like it, they can leave. Over the course of the last several months, as he kept searching in a stupor for The Crown in the wee hours, Cockburn began to notice an increase in the amount of Netflix programming featuring in-your-face progressive messaging.

In the wake of comedian Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special The Closer, activists both online and off warned that Chappelle’s jokes about the trans community would lead to real-world harm, even murder. Instead the trans community has struck first by attacking Chappelle onstage. In his special, Chappelle tells the story of a trans person and friend who defended his stand-up material. Chappelle offered his friend career help by having her open for him on stage. Yet after being bullied by the trans mob for supporting Chappelle, his friend committed suicide. Earlier this week, Chappelle himself was physically attacked at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, during a comedy set that saw many famous faces, including Elon Musk and Chris Rock, in the audience.

I'm holding a Polaroid taken at a Halloween party at one of my early State Department assignments in the 1980s. One of my diplomatic colleagues is in blackface. He’s done up to look like the minstrel player who was on the "Darkie" toothpaste boxes then for sale in every drugstore in Asia. You can see a photo of the packaging: the white teeth against the minstrel player's face were supposed to show how good the toothpaste was. My other colleague is dressed as the Frito Bandito, a caricature of Mexicans used to sell corn chips. The costume theme for the night was advertising icons. In the 1980s, these were acceptable ways to advertise and acceptable costumes for Halloween. Looking at the photo now, I realize it is a weapon.