Woke Mainstream Media Outlets Melt Down Over Dave Chappelle’s New Netflix Special, Accuse The Comedian Of “Attacking” The Transgender Community
Josh Berger
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Dave Chappelle is no stranger to controversy fabricated around his stand up routines, especially those that end up managing to trigger some easily offended woke activists who constantly accuse the comedian of “punching down” by specifically mocking the transgender community.
The Dreamer, the comedian’s latest special for Netflix, has successfully drawn the ire of transgender activists, who have made use of their mainstream media platforms to predictably denounce Chappelle for targeting transgender and disabled individuals.
“When [my father] died, I was inconsolable,” prefaced the comedian in the early minutes of his new comedy special. “I thought I’d never smile or laugh again, and the only thing that got me out of that space was comedian, friend of mine, the late, great Norm Macdonald.”
He further recounted, “And what Norm did, that I’ll never forget, is he knew that I was the biggest Jim Carrey fan in the world. Now, I’m not going to go into it but Jim Carrey is talented in a way that you can’t practice or rehearse. What a God-given talent. I was fascinated with him.”
“And Norm knew that. He called me up and he goes, ‘Dave, I’m doing a movie with Jim Carrey. Do you want to meet him?’ And I said, ‘F—k, yes, I do.’ It was the first time I could remember, since my father died, being excited. The movie is called Man on the Moon.”
Chappelle went on, “In this movie, Jim Carrey was playing another comedian I admired — the late, great Andy Kaufman. And Jim Carrey was so immersed in that role that, from the moment he woke up to the time he went to bed at night, he would live his life as Andy Kaufman.”
“When they said, ‘Cut,’ this n—ga was still Andy Kaufman,” the comedian added, explaining, “So much so that everybody on the crew called him Andy. I didn’t know any of that. I just went there to meet him, and when he walked into the room we were supposed to meet, I screamed, ‘Jim Carrey!’ and everyone said, ‘No! Call him Andy.'”
Chappelle recalled, “And I didn’t understand. And then he came over and was acting weird. I didn’t know he was acting like Andy Kaufman. He was just like, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ and I was like, ‘Hello… Andy?'”
“Now, in hindsight, how f—king lucky am I that I got to see one of the greatest artists of my time immersed in one of his most challenging processes ever? Very lucky to have seen that,” Chappelle added.
He then lamented, “But as it was happening, I was very disappointed,” explaining, “Because I wanted to meet Jim Carrey, and I had to pretend this n—ga was Andy Kaufman all afternoon. It was clearly Jim Carrey. I could look at him and I could see he was Jim Carrey.”
“Anyway, I say all that to say… that’s how trans people make me feel,” Chappelle hit the crowd with the punchline he had building up to, as the audience erupts with laughter, adding a cheeky, “Here we go.”
Chappelle would then make fun of the backlash he got after releasing The Closer, his previous special that triggered the LGBTQ+ community, declaring, “I’m not f—king with those people anymore. It wasn’t worth the trouble.”
“I ain’t saying s—t about trans people. Maybe three or four times tonight, but that is it,” he further joked. “Tired of talking about them. And you wan’t 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.”
Chappelle further mocked, “I don’t need you. I’ve got a whole new angle. You guys will never see this s—t coming. I ain’t doing trans jokes no more. Know what I’mma do tonight? Tonight, I’m doing all handicapped jokes.”
“They’re not as organised as the gays,” he continued, before he said, “And I love punching down,” making allusion to the exact same accusation made by woke advocacy organisation GLAAD in reaction to Chappelle’s Sticks & Stones special from 2019.
Enter triggered woke media outlets, who wasted no time taking offence to Chappelle’s The Dreamer, accusing the prolific comedian of “attacking” the transgender community and labelling his new comedy special as “anti-trans,” repeatedly quoting his obviously sarcastic “I love punching down!” remark.
“Dave Chappelle attacks trans, disabled people in new special: ‘I love punching down’” reads the alarmist headline of an article by San Francisco Chronicle’s Aidin Vaziri, who was seemingly offended by the comedian’s recently-released special.
Variety’s William Earl goes as far as to suggest that Chappelle has an “obsession” with the transgender community in his article entitled “Dave Chappelle’s Obsession With Mocking Trans People Continues in New Netflix Special ‘The Dreamer’: ‘I Love Punching Down.’“
“Maybe it’s time for Dave Chappelle to try some new material,” prefaced Earl, later adding that the comedian “floods the first 12 minutes of the set revisiting his favorite target in recent years: Transgender people.”
“Dave Chappelle’s New Netflix Special Proves He’s Learned Nothing,” reads the headline written by Sean L. McCarthy for far-left Daily Beast, noting that Chappelle “tells the audience trans people make him feel like he has to go along with them pretending, as if they’re method acting like Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman.”
McCarthy ultimately concluded, “Comedians may claim they can’t joke about anything anymore, but they joke about more now than ever before. The real problem with stand-up today is that too many comedians would rather kick people when they’re down, then lecture us on how we’re too sensitive for not laughing about it.”
RELATED: Channing Tatum Says He Hates How Dave Chappelle Has “Hurt So Many People” With His Comedy Routines
“Dave Chappelle Targets Trans Community, Disabled People In ‘The Dreamer’ Netflix Special,” wrote Denise Petski for Deadline, who failed mention that the comedian’s show did not make neither transgenders nor disabled individuals the focus of his special.
She wrote,”After receiving harsh criticism for his remarks about transgender and LGBTQ+ communities in his previous Netflix special The Closer, Dave Chappelle again took a jab at trans people and targeted the disabled community in his latest special The Dreamer.”
“Dave Chappelle Kicks Off New Netflix Special By Attacking Trans People Despite Past Backlash,” wrote Favour Adegoke for Blast, who kept referring to both the comedian’s routines and jokes as “anti-trans.”
In his review for The Telegraph, titled “Dave Chappelle: the controversial US comic sounds like a broken record in this Netflix special,” Tim Harding gave The Dreamer 1 star out of 5, declaring that Chappelle has “has followed many other middle-aged comedians into a preoccupation with trans issues that has made him a controversial figure.”
Harding then added, “In The Dreamer, his seventh special for Netflix in six years, the 50-year-old may have climbed down from dedicating whole segments to his thoughts on the trans community, but he still returns to the topic compulsively, clumsily shoe-horning digs into unrelated routines.”
RELATED: Netflix Transgender Activists Demand Dave Chappelle Imagery Be Removed From The Company’s Offices
Calls for cancellation of Chappelle’s new special — or the comedian himself, for that matter — have not been heard as loudly as before. Following the release of Sticks & Stones in 2019 and The Closer in 2021, the comedian was hit with several accusations from transgender activists.
Netflix’s transgender employee resource group (ERG) even demanded co-CEO Ted Sarandos to remove all and any imagery or references of Chappelle from the company’s offices, “inside of the workplace, including but not limited to murals, posters, room names, swag.”
The group also demanded the streaming giant to acknowledge that “[The Closer] causes harm to the trans community and Netflix’s responsibility on it so we keep the conversation around transphobia evolving internally,” also dragging comedian Ricky Gervais’ After Life into the list of specials they deemed offensive.
Specifically addressing accusations that claimed Chappelle’s special should be considered as hate speech, Sarandos declared at the time, “Under the definition of ‘does it intend to cause physical harm?’ I do not believe it falls into hate speech,” later adding that he personally doesn’t believe “there have been many calls to remove” the The Closer.
Dave Chappelle is hitting every punchline in The Dreamer, currently streaming on Netflix.
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