Comedian Dave Chappelle told NPR that he is upset that Republicans, conservatives, and MAGA supporters have “weaponized” his criticism of the transgender movement.
In his interview, the comedian complained that people on the right used his jokes from his 2021 Netflix special, The Closer, to push their agenda and took the points way farther than he intended for them.
“I did resent that the Republican Party ran on transgender jokes. You know, I felt like they were doing a weaponized version of what I was doing. That’s not what I was doing,” Chappelle told NPR’s Newsmakers released this week.
“I’ll give you an example, before I learned the phrase, ‘I respectfully decline,’ I was on Capitol Hill, and everybody ran up to take pictures with me from every congressional office. And I just take pictures with whoever asked. I didn’t ask how they vote or what their voting record is,” he added.
“At first, it was CBC people,” he said. “Then here comes Lauren Boebert and she said, ‘Can I get a picture?’ And I had already taken 40 pictures. I didn’t want to say no in front of everybody, but I didn’t know the phrase ‘I respectfully decline.’ So I just took the picture. And then she posted the picture before I could even get from there to the show and says something to the effect of, ‘Just two people that know that it’s just two genders.’ Just instantly, like, weaponized or politicized. So I got to the arena, and I lit her ass up for doing that. And she should never do that to a person like me.”
But he also blasted anyone who has attacked him for doing comedy and ripped people for “policing comedy.” He said that he is just doing comedy and that his fans know what he means and enjoy what he does.
“If you’re a person that … feels like you have to police comedy to get your point across, you should assess your point,” he told NPR’s Michel Martin.
Chappelle has criticized some of the comedy venues for cancelling his shows after the controversies arose.
“I guess apparently they had made a pledge to the public at large that they would make their club a safe space for all people, and that they would ban anything they deemed transphobic,” Chappelle had said in 2023 specifically of Minneapolis’ First Avenue theater. “This is a wild stance for an artistic venue to take, especially one that’s historically a punk rock venue.”
“I’m not even mad [people] take issue with my work. Good, fine. Who cares?” he said “What I take issue with is the idea that because they don’t like it, I’m not allowed to say it. Art is a nuanced endeavor. I have a belief that they are trying to take the nuance out of speech in American culture, that they’re making people speak as if they’re either on the right or the left. Everything seems absolute, and any opinion I respect is way more nuanced than these binary choices they keep putting in front of us. I don’t see the world in red or blue.”
Watch the whole interview here:
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