Dave Chappelle is aggravating audiences again with his new Netflix special, The Dreamer.
Variety reports that the once-salient comic is continuing his new foray into punch-down comedy, particularly against transgender people. In fact, in the special, which debuted Dec. 31, included Chappelle saying “I love punching down.”
However, Chappelle proclaimed he would stop making jokes about trans people, starting off his set saying how he visited the 1999 film set of the film Man on the Moon starring Jim Carrey as comedian Andy Kaufman. Chappelle said he was “very disappointed” during the day he spent talking to Carrey as Kaufman, adding that “[t]hat’s how trans people make me feel.”
He continued, “If you guys came here to this show tonight thinking that I’m going to make fun of those people again, you’ve come to the wrong show. I’m not f—ing with those people anymore. It wasn’t worth the trouble. I ain’t saying s–t about them. Maybe three or four times tonight, but that’s it.”
“I’m tired of talking about them. And you want to know why I’m tired of talking about them? Because these people acted like I needed them to be funny. Well, that’s ridiculous,” he added. “I don’t need you. I got a whole new angle coming. You guys will never see this s–t coming. I ain’t doing trans jokes no more.”
Chappelle then said that he was going to start joking about the “handicapped” because “they’re not as organized as the gays. And I love punching down.”
Even though he said he wouldn’t talk about trans people anymore, he still told jokes that could be taken as offensive. One was that he had been trying to make amends with the trans community by writing a play, but it’s about a Black transgender woman “whose pronoun is, sadly, n—a.”
“It’s a tear-jerker. At the end of the play, she dies of loneliness cause white liberals don’t know how to speak to her. It’s sad,” he said.
Another joke was about if he got arrested and sent to prison, he’d rather it be in California where he could proclaim himself as a woman to go to a woman’s prison, and made a lewd reference to having a female prisoner “suck this girl d**k I got” because “I’m a girl.”
He also addressed his 2022 attack from a trans man at the Hollywood Bowl, making jokes about how the assailant was trans. Even though the audience apparently booed the joke, Chappelle continued, “I triggered them because I had done LGBTQ [sic] jokes and it turns out this fella was a ‘B.'” He also joked that he “could have been raped” because the assailant was bisexual.
Netflix has stuck beside Chappelle throughout his ongoing trans punch-downs in his recent specials, so don’t expect the streamer to suddenly turn on Chappelle after this special. But perhaps the mileage Chappelle seemingly got out of making fun of trans people is coming to a halt seeing how the audience booed during the taped special. As Jerrod Carmichael said of Chappelle’s jokes in 2022, “It’s an odd hill to die on.”
