Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgfX9bvmEhs
The Joe Rogan Experience comedians don't and really can't exercise political power they might you know influence to a certain extent the way that people think about certain things but um nobody's you know nobody who's who's doing comedy is uh is making decisions you know that directly uh directly impact uh people's lives so so if if you were actually trying to to do that you know like if you're actually trying to affect real change this doesn't make any sense what I think it is is it's a symptom of how extreme this kind of moralistic approach to politics can get right that like you're this concerned with like constantly you know testing you know whether somebody is a is a good person or a bad person or they ever said anything that you know that might show them to like to really be a bad person and nothing could ever just be a bad moment right that you know that that it has to be like this is the moment where you really revealed the you know how toxic your soul was or something you know rather than just like you said something stupid because sometimes people say things that are stupid you know that uh like I think that that kind of moralism when it's applied to Comedy I think that that's I think that that's like maybe the most extreme symptom of of what I'm talking about because it's one thing even to get mad at somebody because like of something they wrote like in an editorial right that they're they're telling you like exactly what the thing should happen you know that like if I you know if I write you know if I write something for Jacobin and you know some people get upset about that okay at least it's a jack of an article I'm literally saying exactly what I think right but if you're doing you know a um account like so so that last uh Dave Chappelle special at Netflix you know that that people people got mad about and which by the way I I you know hadn't even watched but since I'd written this thing you know people kept asking me what I thought and I finally watched it and I thought that the way that it was portrayed as if it were this like just Festival of transphobic you know hatred preposterone it was ridiculous that in fact the overall theme of the special as
far as those issues go was about him like moving towards a place of Greater understanding and you know and and like and it's also kind of a love letter to his friend that committed suicide for supporting him was attacked for supporting him and then she jumped off a [ __ ] building and committed suicide this is like in an homage to this person's life this long part of like I worked with Dave during the entire time he was piecing that together because we started doing shows in Austin like uh November of 2020. it might have even been earlier than that and we were working together while he was putting it together and he was responding to this idea that he was transphobic and he was saying like this is so crazy like this is who I am and this is about this person who when I was accused of being transphobic this person defended me and was dragged by people and there's been some talk of whether or not like how much of that was creative license because like people have tried to find like what the tweets were how many of them were DMs like we don't know I mean I don't think you could dismiss that or how many of them or people who actually knew her personally but then committed suicide and like this is like trying to make it's the highest form of comedy in a lot of ways because you're trying to take this like socially sensitive issue and extract laughs from it which is very difficult to do but in no way was it transphobic in no way was it hurtful or cruel or or mean well I mean I mean actually he's like he spent a couple minutes the special explaining why the bathroom was North Carolina were cruel and like at the end like when he's talking about his dead friends like one of the crucial moments comes when he's describing they're like back and forth you know when he he had her open for him and yeah and it's hilarious yeah which is a hilarious thing but there is this like really moving part of it right at the at the end where you know he you know she's she tells him you know like I want you to recognize that I'm going through a real human experience yeah I can and like it really sinks in in that and the idea that watching this would make somebody more transphobic yeah just just seems absurd to me but what people did right is they literally quoted individual sentences that he says in it
like like there's one point in the special where he says uh I'm a Turf right Turf standing for Trans extension Turf yeah radical yeah and it's like okay but literally within like two minutes of him saying I'm on team Turf he says I'm not saying that I don't think trans women are women it's like well hold on right like you know exactly if you take both of those literally right those those two those two don't go together right but of course that's not how Comedy Works that's like thinking that like somebody who writes a novel that like every sentence of the novel is like what they actually personally think of is is true but I I think and I've got to think that a lot of people who write articles like this must understand that on some level right that they that like this is not how Comedy Works but I think that you know sometimes it's like bad faith or you know they're just being dishonest definitely some of that but like also I think that like sometimes if you get this invested in like making these like moral indictments of people over these cultural War battles then you're just not even pausing to think about that like you're just like trying to find evidence like you're just like like sifting through it to like find like it's like uh you know Freddie Deborah the commentator no okay so Freddie Deboer is a is a writer he wrote a really good book uh about the education system called culture smart and he has this essay from a few years ago called planet of cops uh where he says that it seems to him that like increasingly everybody you know in the culture is is a is a cop now right what he means by that and you know he develops the metaphor he says things like you know oh there's the new movie that people are getting excited about you know well give me you know give me two hours and 500 Words and I'll find you your indictments right you know that it's it's like it's sort of constantly sifting through things to like find evidence that people have have committed some kind of sin or or um or infraction and and I think that like that's how people are approaching that like when they wrote These articles you know about you know how oh my god did you know that Dave Chappelle said
that he was on team Turf you know in that special like look there's a mission right you know you gotta you gotta get those indictments right so you just have to sort through all all of it until you can find something that you know that looks like a a Smoking Gun of of evidence and and I think that it's like it's a obviously it's a terrible way to write about anything but I think what what's interesting to me about the example of Comedy is that it's sort of the most absurd possible application of of doing that because I mean just just to be like simplistic about it for a second right like if you're saying something in a stand-up special like generally speaking not every sentence but like you're saying it because you think it's funny right that that's which is just a different thing from saying something because like oh you know here is exactly what I think right you know it's like the example that we were talking about before the podcast which I'm not gonna do because it's actually in my act now that someone put a quote that I said well what a piece of [ __ ] on I'm like hey you got to put the whole quote because there's like a lot more to that and it's clearly joking but it's that thing that they do is also because someone is getting a disproportionate and exorbitant amount of attention and when someone is like a Dave Chappelle or myself who's got a disproportionate of attention there's so many people that want to look at that and go flaws holes puppet kegs throw rocks like and it's a normal thing to have this sort of uh reaction yeah to someone who you feel either their take on things isn't valid or it's not this it doesn't align with your own or you there's a reason why you're more real morally Superior to them because your position is better you know yeah no I think there I think there's a lot of that you know and and it's also I mean it kind of goes back to where we're saying earlier about the uh the you know BLM protests and the aftermath and all that stuff like if you get somebody like if um I mean obviously in a case it's high profile it's like Dave Chappelle like Netflix isn't going to dump him because like why would they do that like that would just be putting like a lot of money on the uh well not only that but
there's no reason to right here's the thing it's like if Dave Chappelle was saying all trans people would die it should die and you know we they're not human okay yeah get rid of them right everybody would agree to that like you shouldn't put that on your network but you cannot look at any of the things that he said and rationalize any of these accusations that people have towards them he is not that guy he is a lovely guy if you meet him he was one of the kindest nicest sweetest guys that's who he really is and it's really striking too because if you remember when all this was going on there was like a week of the news that was all about how there's gonna be this huge walkout of trans employees at Netflix remember this yeah they took it like a lunch break it was like five of them yeah there were like five people and it's not even clear that they all worked at Netflix most of them didn't and then the one of them that was there they found a whole bunch of racist [ __ ] that she had put on Twitter and they're like hey and then not even jokes just like racist stuff it's like God damn damn it I don't get what's going on these are like they're humans humans are flawed and you know just because they said a thing that was incorrect doesn't mean that they're whatever position they have they can't have a good perspective on something yeah and what and what kills me about that example is at that very moment that that was going on right that there was this like super hyped up you know walk out that like got all this attention there was like you know two people on their lunch break or whatever like at the same time there was the John Deere strike going on and that was that was you know thousands of people you know we're we're out on strike for uh to you know to get better you know wages and working conditions John Deere the tractors yeah yep yep the workers I've heard of that yeah yeah if you go um if you go I believe you but I mean yeah I never heard a peep out of that yeah well that's the thing right so like you compare the scale of the two things and then you compare the scale of the coverage right one of them is jokes yeah but it's also jokes from the greatest living comedian that's part of the problem it's like you and also a guy who you uh you sort of associate with
left-wing values and Progressive values and you want them to fall in line and I think that's part of the blowback is that you know they they want to shame him into falling in line with their ideals and one of the things that he said like when he we talked about the special and this is we did a show together and he did this speech at an arena and he's like like I am not going to comply with the way you you know want me to think and want me to behave that's not what I'm doing yeah and and again like what's his response going to be realistically like he's he's just gonna um keep talking [ __ ] that's what he's gonna do right I mean it's gonna be funnier and funnier right you know but like he like the idea that like saying like he's a terrible person he's a transphobe like is gonna get him to like see things more from your perspective in fact he talks about this one special right that like he you know he has the thing about the woman who like followed him out to the parking lot or whatever to you know to give him a hard time and the point is that like all of that like his reaction was just [ __ ] you right you know like of course it is right you know but like then like actually meeting this trans woman and like having this you know like like you know like you know having the interactions that they had and like having that mean something to him right like that that um like that did way more probably to get him to see things the way that people were yelling at him wanted him to see them then like people just like saying you know that like because if if you say like if somebody wants to like shut you down or silence you or like berate you until you you know you stop thinking what you think then I I mean maybe like if somebody's powerless enough they'll just shut up because they don't want to deal with it right you know but like otherwise like one thing it's not gonna do is to get them to say okay now I see you're right right especially like they might say their perception they might say the words if they think they have to right but they're not going to think it right