Jerrod Carmichael is letting his feelings about Dave Chappelle‘s attacks against trans people known.
According to Variety, Carmichael talked about his view on Chappelle for GQ, saying that Chappelle’s attacks are now part of Chappelle’s legacy.
“Chappelle, do you know what comes up when you Google your name, bro?” said Carmichael. “That’s the legacy? Your legacy is a bunch of opinions on trans shit? It’s an odd hill to die on. And it’s like, hey, bro. Who the f— are you? Who do you f—? What do you like to do? Childish jokes aside, who the f— are you? But he’s choosing to die on the hill. So, alright, let him.”
Carmichael, whose latest comedy special 'Rothaniel,' is now streaming on HBO Max, also talked about cancel culture, or the lack thereof, saying that comedians (and others) who are busy spreading fear about being cancelled are actually quite okay.
“What does [getting cancelled] mean, that people are mad on Twitter?” he said. “Everybody’s fine. These grown men are fine. I think, a lot of times, people who offer nothing truthful or meaningful about themselves then complain about society at large and create this boogeyman. It’s like, listen, that’s the most urgent thing in your life? God bless you. I’m tired of hearing it.”
Chappelle has, indeed, turned his brand into a single-focused machine for taking on trans viewers and trans people as a whole.
His latest Netflix special, The Closer, explicitly made fun of trans issues and the transgender experience, leading to many Netflix employees to boycott their company for airing and supporting Chappelle. Netflix’s CEO Ted Sarandos declared in May that it “wasn’t hard” for him to support Chappelle’s freedom of speech.
“We’re programming for a lot of diverse people who have different opinions and different tastes and different styles, and yet we’re not making everything for everybody,” he said, according to Deadline. “We want something for everybody, but everything’s not going to be for everybody.”
"…[R]arely do you get the opportunity to put your principles to the test," he continued. "It was an opportunity to take somebody, like in Dave's case, who is, by all measure, the comedian of our generation, the most popular comedian on Netflix for sure. Nobody would say that what he does isn't thoughtful or smart. You just don't agree with him."
However, Carmichael isn’t the only comedian who doesn’t understand why Chappelle’s career has taken this turn. Last December, Cedric The Entertainer commented on Chappelle’s comedy, saying that he will eventually ruin his reputation.
“I think that you just gotta be watching. Once you feel you’re un-cancellable, and you think that that’s what you’re fighting for, that’s the wrong approach to take to say something that you really wanna say,” Cedric The Entertainer said on the Domenick Nati Show. “Not in the sense that ‘Oh, can’t nobody cancel me so Imma say that I wanna say.’ You can find out–people will cancel your a–.”
“He will end up canceling himself if he feels like nobody can cancel him," he continued.
“That’s what happens–you end up getting in people’s head in a way to where they turn you off. And it ain’t so much about everybody else turning you off. It’s people just deciding like ‘Dawg, if you think you’re bigger and better than everybody and you literally start believing that, then people start to go like ‘Well f— you…That’s a slippery slope in the world we live in, and I feel like people are concerned that he’s trying to go over the top right now.”
