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Friday, July 17, 2015

‘I support anyone’s right to be who they want to be. My question is: to what extent do I have to participate in your self-image?’ - Dave Chappelle

Dave Chappelle's Comeback Tour Takes Aim at "New Intolerance" - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "His new set is peppered with jokes about him coming face-to-face with the new intolerance. There’s the lesbian couple whose kid is at the same ‘liberal-rich’ private school as his son – one of them laughing along at his jokes about whether or not they qualify for the father-son picnic, the other ‘too committed to her lesbianism’ to entertain them. And then there’s that trans joke, in which Dave, finding himself at a poncey gallery party, is stared down when he dares to ask ‘Is he okay?’ after a cross-dresser collapses in the corner. ‘I support anyone’s right to be who they want to be. My question is: to what extent do I have to participate in your self-image?’

...It's not just Chappelle who has changed over the past 10 years, of course. So has the culture, which has gotten noticeably touchier about all sorts of real and imagined slights. Spiked's Tom Slater has a review-essay about seeing Chappelle, who converted to Islam in the late 1990s, perform in London that's well worth a read if you care about freedom of expression and what is accurately called "the new intolerance...

Race continues to figure heavily in his set, but he draws a line between the real, post-Ferguson issues and mere offence-seeking. ‘Black skin is thick skin’, he says, launching into a hilarious, absurd routine about walking into a Kentucky Fried Chicken, unperturbed when he finds all of the staff wearing KKK hoods, before opining on the ethics of ejaculating after your white girlfriend inadvertently drops racial epithets during sex."



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