Name: Author Ben Burgis on Dave Chappelle and the Moralism of Canceling Comedians
Uploaded: 2022-02-25T00:43:36.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Author Ben Burgis on Dave Chappelle and the Moralism of Canceling Comedians' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-25. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Author Ben Burgis on Dave Chappelle and the Moralism of Canceling Comedians' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-25. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- Comedians don't, and really can't,
exercise political power.
They might influence to a certain extent
the way that people think about certain things,
but nobody's, you know, nobody who's doing comedy
is making decisions that directly impact people's lives.
So if you are actually trying to do that,
if you're actually trying to effect real change,
this doesn't make any sense.
What I think it is, is it's a symptom of how extreme
this kind of moralistic approach to politics can get, right?
That you're this concerned with constantly testing
whether somebody is a good person or a bad person,
or they ever said anything that might show them
to really be a bad person,
and nothing could ever just be a bad moment, right?
That it has to be like, this is the moment where you really
revealed the, you know, how toxic your soul was, or something,
you know, rather than just like, you said something stupid,
because sometimes people say things that are stupid, you know?
That, like, I think that that kind of moralism,
when it's applied to comedy,
I think that that's, I think that that's, like, maybe the most extreme symptom
of what I'm talking about, because it's one thing even to get mad at somebody,
because, like, of something they wrote, like, in an editorial, right?
That they're telling you, like, exactly what they think should happen, you know?
That, like, if I, you know, if I write, you know, if I write something for
Jacobin,
and, you know, some people get upset about that, okay, at least it's a Jacobin
article.
I'm literally saying exactly what I think, right?
But if you're doing, you know, a, like, so that last Dave Chappelle special at
Netflix,
you know, that people got mad about, and, which, by the way, I, you know,
hadn't even watched, but since I had written this thing, you know,
people kept asking me what I thought, and I finally watched it,
and I thought that the way that it was portrayed as if it were this, like,
just festival of transphobic, you know, hatred...
Preposterous.
...was ridiculous.
That, in fact, the overall theme of the special, as far as those issues go,
was about him, like, moving towards a place of greater understanding and, you
know, and, like...
And there's also kind of a love letter to his friend that committed suicide for
supporting him,
was attacked for supporting him,
and then she jumped off a fucking building and committed suicide.
This is, like, an homage to this person's life, this long part of it.
Like, I worked with Dave during the entire time he was piecing that together,
because we started doing shows in Austin, like, November of 2020.
It might have even been earlier than that.
And we were working together while he was putting it together,
and he was responding to this idea that he was transphobic.
And he was saying, like, this is so crazy.
Like, this is who I am, and this is about this person who,
when I was accused of being transphobic, this person defended me
and was dragged by people.
There's been some talk of whether or not, like, how much of that was creative
license,
because, like, people have tried to find, like, what the tweets were.
How many of them were DMs?
Like, we don't know.
I mean, I don't think you could dismiss that.
Or how many of them were people who actually knew her personally,
but then committed suicide?
And, like, this is, like, trying to make...
It's the highest form of comedy in a lot of ways,
because you're trying to take this, like, socially sensitive issue
and extract laughs from it, which is very difficult to do.
But in no way was it transphobic.
In no way was it hurtful or cruel or mean.
Well, I mean, actually, like, he spent a couple minutes of the special
explaining why the bathroom laws in North Carolina were cruel.
And, like, at the end, like, when he's talking about his dead friend,
like, one of the crucial moments comes when he's describing
their, like, back and forth, you know, when he had her open for him.
Yes.
And...
It's hilarious.
Yeah, which is a hilarious thing.
But there is this, like, really moving part of it, right,
at the end where, you know, he...
You know, she tells him, you know, like,
I want you to recognize that I'm going through a real human experience.
And, like, it really sinks in in that.
And the idea that watching this would make somebody more transphobic
just seems absurd to me.
But what people did, right,
is they literally quoted individual sentences that he says in it.
Like, there's one point in the special where he says,
I'm a TERF, right?
TERF standing for trans exclusionary.
Team TERF.
Yeah.
It's a joke.
Yeah.
And it's like, okay, but literally within, like,
two minutes of him saying, I'm on team TERF,
he says, I'm not saying that I don't think trans women are women.
It's like, well, hold on.
Right?
Like, you know, if you take both of those literally, right,
those two don't go together.
Right.
But, of course, that's not how comedy works.
That's like thinking that, like, somebody who writes a novel,
that, like, every sentence of the novel
is, like, what they actually personally think is true.
But I think, and I've got to think that a lot of people
who write articles like this must understand that on some level, right?
That, like, this is not how comedy works.
But I think that, you know, sometimes it's, like, bad faith.
They're, you know, they're just being dishonest.
There's definitely some of that.
But, like, also I think that, like, sometimes if you get this invested
in, like, making these, like, moral indictments of people
over those culture war battles,
then you're just not even pausing to think about that.
Like, you're just, like, trying to find evidence.
Like, you're just, like, like, sifting through it to, like, find, like,
it's like, you know, Freddie DeBoer, the commentator?
No.
Okay.
So Freddie DeBoer is a writer.
He wrote a really good book about the education system called Cult of Smart.
And he has this essay from a few years ago called Planet of Cops,
where he says that it seems to him that, like, increasingly
everybody, you know, in the culture is a cop now, right?
What he means by that.
And, you know, he develops the metaphor.
He says things like, you know,
oh, there's the new movie that people are getting excited about,
you know, well, give me, you know,
give me two hours and 500 words and I'll find you your indictments, right?
You know, that it's, like,
that's sort of constantly sifting through things to, like,
find evidence that people have committed some kind of sin or infraction.
And I think that, like, that's how people are approaching that.
Like, when they wrote these articles, you know, about, you know, how,
oh, my God, did you know that Dave Chappelle said that he was on Team Turf,
you know, in that special?
Like, look, there's a mission, right?
You know, you got to get those indictments, right?
So you just have to sort through all of it until you can find something that,
you know, that looks like a smoking gun of evidence.
And I think that it's, like, it's a,
obviously it's a terrible way to write about anything.
But I think what's interesting to me about the example of comedy
is that it's sort of the most absurd possible application of doing that.
Because, I mean, just to be, like, simplistic about it for a second, right?
Like, if you're saying something in a stand-up special,
like, generally speaking, not every sentence,
but, like, you're saying it because you think it's funny, right?
That that's which is just a different thing from saying something.
Because, like, oh, you know, here is exactly what I think, right?
It's like the example that we were talking about before the podcast,
which I'm not going to do because it's actually in my act now,
that someone put a quote that I said in an article about what a piece of shit I
am.
And I'm like, hey, you've got to put the whole quote.
There's, like, a lot more to that.
And it's clearly joking.
But it's that thing that they do is also because someone is getting a
disproportionate
and exorbitant amount of attention.
And when someone is like a Dave Chappelle or myself,
who's got a disproportionate amount of attention,
there's so many people that want to look at that and go,
flaws, holes, pep and keg, throw rocks!
And it's a normal thing to have this sort of reaction to someone who you feel
either their take on things isn't valid or it doesn't align with your own
or there's a reason why you're morally superior to them because your position
is better.
Yeah, no, I think there's a lot of that, you know.
And it's also, I mean, it kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier
about the, you know,
BLM protests and the aftermath and all of that stuff.
Like, if you get somebody, like, if, I mean, obviously in a case as high
profile as, like, Dave Chappelle,
like, Netflix isn't going to dump him because, like, why would they do that?
Like, that would just be putting, like, a lot of money on the tape.
Well, not only that, but there's no reason to.
Right.
Here's the thing.
It's like if Dave Chappelle was saying all trans people would die, should die,
and they're
not human, okay, yeah, get rid of them.
Right.
Everybody would agree to that.
Like, you shouldn't put that on your network.
But you cannot look at any of the things that he said and rationalize any of
these accusations
that people have towards him.
He is not that guy.
He is a lovely guy.
If you meet him, he was one of the kindest, nicest, sweetest guys.
That's who he really is.
And it's really striking, too, because if you remember when all this was going
on, there
was, like, a week of the news that was all about how there was going to be this
huge walkout
of trans employees at Netflix.
You remember this?
Yeah, they took, like, a lunch break.
It was, like, five of them.
Yeah, there were, like, five people, and it's not even clear that they all
worked at Netflix.
No, most of them didn't.
And then the one of them that was there, they found a whole bunch of racist
shit that she
had put on Twitter.
And they're, like, hey.
And then not even jokes.
Just, like, racist stuff.
It's, like, god damn it.
I get what's going on.
These are, like, they're humans.
Humans are flawed, and, you know, just because they said a thing that was
incorrect doesn't
mean that they're, whatever position they have, they can't have a good
perspective on
something.
Yeah, and what kills me about that example is at that very moment that that was
going on,
right?
That there was this, like, super hyped up, you know, walkout that, like, got
all this attention.
There was, like, you know, two people on their lunch break or whatever.
Like, at the same time, there was the John Deere strike going on, and that was,
you know,
thousands of people, you know, were out on strike to, you know, to get better,
you know,
wages and working conditions.
John Deere, the tractors?
Yeah, yep, yep, the workers.
I've never heard of that.
Yeah, yeah, if you go back.
I believe you, but, I mean, I've never heard a peep out of that.
Yeah, well, that's the thing, right?
So, like, you compare the scale of the two things, and then you compare the
scale of the
coverage.
Right, one of them is jokes.
But it's also jokes from the greatest living comedian.
That's part of the problem.
It's like, you, and also a guy who you sort of associate with left-wing values
and progressive
values, and you want him to fall in line.
And I think that's part of the blowback, is that, you know, they want to shame
him into
falling in line with their ideals.
And one of the things that he said, like, when we talked about the special, and
this is,
we did a show together, and he did this speech at an arena, and he's like, like,
I am not
going to comply with the way you, you know, want me to think and want me to
behave.
That's not what I'm doing.
Yeah, and again, like, what's his response going to be realistically?
Like, he's just going to, like...
Keep talking shit.
That's what he's going to do.
Right.
It's going to be funnier and funnier.
Right.
You know, but, like, the idea that, like, saying, like, he's a terrible person,
he's
a transphobe, like, is going to get him to, like, see things more from your
perspective.
In fact, he talks about this in the special, right?
That, like, he, you know, he has the thing about the woman who, like, followed
him out
to the parking lot or whatever to, you know, to give him a hard time.
And the point is that, like, all of that, like, his reaction was just, fuck you,
right?
You know, like, of course it is, right?
You know, but, like, then, like, actually meeting this trans woman and, like,
having this,
you know, like, you know, like, you know, having the interactions that they had
and, like,
having that mean something to him, right?
Like, that, like, that did way more probably to get him to see things the way
that people
were yelling at him, wanted him to see them, than, like, people just, like,
saying, you
know, that, like, because if you say, like, if somebody wants to, like, shut
you down or
silence you or, like, berate you until you, you know, you stop thinking what
you think,
then, I mean, maybe, like, if somebody's powerless enough, they'll just shut up
because
they don't want to deal with it, right?
You know, but, like, otherwise, like, one thing it's not going to do is to get
them to
say, okay, now I see you're right.
Right.
Especially if you're distorting their perceptions.
They might say the words if they think they have to, right?
But they're not going to think it.
Right.

Author Ben Burgis on Dave Chappelle and the Moralism of Canceling Comedians

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- Comedians don't, and really can't,
exercise political power.
They might influence to a certain extent
the way that people think about certain things,
but nobody's, you know, nobody who's doing comedy
is making decisions that directly impact people's lives.
So if you are actually trying to do that,
if you're actually trying to effect real change,
this doesn't make any sense.
What I think it is, is it's a symptom of how extreme
this kind of moralistic approach to politics can get, right?
That you're this concerned with constantly testing
whether somebody is a good person or a bad person,
or they ever said anything that might show them
to really be a bad person,
and nothing could ever just be a bad moment, right?
That it has to be like, this is the moment where you really
revealed the, you know, how toxic your soul was, or something,
you know, rather than just like, you said something stupid,
because sometimes people say things that are stupid, you know?
That, like, I think that that kind of moralism,
when it's applied to comedy,
I think that that's, I think that that's, like, maybe the most extreme symptom
of what I'm talking about, because it's one thing even to get mad at somebody,
because, like, of something they wrote, like, in an editorial, right?
That they're telling you, like, exactly what they think should happen, you know?
That, like, if I, you know, if I write, you know, if I write something for
Jacobin,
and, you know, some people get upset about that, okay, at least it's a Jacobin
article.
I'm literally saying exactly what I think, right?
But if you're doing, you know, a, like, so that last Dave Chappelle special at
Netflix,
you know, that people got mad about, and, which, by the way, I, you know,
hadn't even watched, but since I had written this thing, you know,
people kept asking me what I thought, and I finally watched it,
and I thought that the way that it was portrayed as if it were this, like,
just festival of transphobic, you know, hatred...
Preposterous.
...was ridiculous.
That, in fact, the overall theme of the special, as far as those issues go,
was about him, like, moving towards a place of greater understanding and, you
know, and, like...
And there's also kind of a love letter to his friend that committed suicide for
supporting him,
was attacked for supporting him,
and then she jumped off a fucking building and committed suicide.
This is, like, an homage to this person's life, this long part of it.
Like, I worked with Dave during the entire time he was piecing that together,
because we started doing shows in Austin, like, November of 2020.
It might have even been earlier than that.
And we were working together while he was putting it together,
and he was responding to this idea that he was transphobic.
And he was saying, like, this is so crazy.
Like, this is who I am, and this is about this person who,
when I was accused of being transphobic, this person defended me
and was dragged by people.
There's been some talk of whether or not, like, how much of that was creative
license,
because, like, people have tried to find, like, what the tweets were.
How many of them were DMs?
Like, we don't know.
I mean, I don't think you could dismiss that.
Or how many of them were people who actually knew her personally,
but then committed suicide?
And, like, this is, like, trying to make...
It's the highest form of comedy in a lot of ways,
because you're trying to take this, like, socially sensitive issue
and extract laughs from it, which is very difficult to do.
But in no way was it transphobic.
In no way was it hurtful or cruel or mean.
Well, I mean, actually, like, he spent a couple minutes of the special
explaining why the bathroom laws in North Carolina were cruel.
And, like, at the end, like, when he's talking about his dead friend,
like, one of the crucial moments comes when he's describing
their, like, back and forth, you know, when he had her open for him.
Yes.
And...
It's hilarious.
Yeah, which is a hilarious thing.
But there is this, like, really moving part of it, right,
at the end where, you know, he...
You know, she tells him, you know, like,
I want you to recognize that I'm going through a real human experience.
And, like, it really sinks in in that.
And the idea that watching this would make somebody more transphobic
just seems absurd to me.
But what people did, right,
is they literally quoted individual sentences that he says in it.
Like, there's one point in the special where he says,
I'm a TERF, right?
TERF standing for trans exclusionary.
Team TERF.
Yeah.
It's a joke.
Yeah.
And it's like, okay, but literally within, like,
two minutes of him saying, I'm on team TERF,
he says, I'm not saying that I don't think trans women are women.
It's like, well, hold on.
Right?
Like, you know, if you take both of those literally, right,
those two don't go together.
Right.
But, of course, that's not how comedy works.
That's like thinking that, like, somebody who writes a novel,
that, like, every sentence of the novel
is, like, what they actually personally think is true.
But I think, and I've got to think that a lot of people
who write articles like this must understand that on some level, right?
That, like, this is not how comedy works.
But I think that, you know, sometimes it's, like, bad faith.
They're, you know, they're just being dishonest.
There's definitely some of that.
But, like, also I think that, like, sometimes if you get this invested
in, like, making these, like, moral indictments of people
over those culture war battles,
then you're just not even pausing to think about that.
Like, you're just, like, trying to find evidence.
Like, you're just, like, like, sifting through it to, like, find, like,
it's like, you know, Freddie DeBoer, the commentator?
No.
Okay.
So Freddie DeBoer is a writer.
He wrote a really good book about the education system called Cult of Smart.
And he has this essay from a few years ago called Planet of Cops,
where he says that it seems to him that, like, increasingly
everybody, you know, in the culture is a cop now, right?
What he means by that.
And, you know, he develops the metaphor.
He says things like, you know,
oh, there's the new movie that people are getting excited about,
you know, well, give me, you know,
give me two hours and 500 words and I'll find you your indictments, right?
You know, that it's, like,
that's sort of constantly sifting through things to, like,
find evidence that people have committed some kind of sin or infraction.
And I think that, like, that's how people are approaching that.
Like, when they wrote these articles, you know, about, you know, how,
oh, my God, did you know that Dave Chappelle said that he was on Team Turf,
you know, in that special?
Like, look, there's a mission, right?
You know, you got to get those indictments, right?
So you just have to sort through all of it until you can find something that,
you know, that looks like a smoking gun of evidence.
And I think that it's, like, it's a,
obviously it's a terrible way to write about anything.
But I think what's interesting to me about the example of comedy
is that it's sort of the most absurd possible application of doing that.
Because, I mean, just to be, like, simplistic about it for a second, right?
Like, if you're saying something in a stand-up special,
like, generally speaking, not every sentence,
but, like, you're saying it because you think it's funny, right?
That that's which is just a different thing from saying something.
Because, like, oh, you know, here is exactly what I think, right?
It's like the example that we were talking about before the podcast,
which I'm not going to do because it's actually in my act now,
that someone put a quote that I said in an article about what a piece of shit I
am.
And I'm like, hey, you've got to put the whole quote.
There's, like, a lot more to that.
And it's clearly joking.
But it's that thing that they do is also because someone is getting a
disproportionate
and exorbitant amount of attention.
And when someone is like a Dave Chappelle or myself,
who's got a disproportionate amount of attention,
there's so many people that want to look at that and go,
flaws, holes, pep and keg, throw rocks!
And it's a normal thing to have this sort of reaction to someone who you feel
either their take on things isn't valid or it doesn't align with your own
or there's a reason why you're morally superior to them because your position
is better.
Yeah, no, I think there's a lot of that, you know.
And it's also, I mean, it kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier
about the, you know,
BLM protests and the aftermath and all of that stuff.
Like, if you get somebody, like, if, I mean, obviously in a case as high
profile as, like, Dave Chappelle,
like, Netflix isn't going to dump him because, like, why would they do that?
Like, that would just be putting, like, a lot of money on the tape.
Well, not only that, but there's no reason to.
Right.
Here's the thing.
It's like if Dave Chappelle was saying all trans people would die, should die,
and they're
not human, okay, yeah, get rid of them.
Right.
Everybody would agree to that.
Like, you shouldn't put that on your network.
But you cannot look at any of the things that he said and rationalize any of
these accusations
that people have towards him.
He is not that guy.
He is a lovely guy.
If you meet him, he was one of the kindest, nicest, sweetest guys.
That's who he really is.
And it's really striking, too, because if you remember when all this was going
on, there
was, like, a week of the news that was all about how there was going to be this
huge walkout
of trans employees at Netflix.
You remember this?
Yeah, they took, like, a lunch break.
It was, like, five of them.
Yeah, there were, like, five people, and it's not even clear that they all
worked at Netflix.
No, most of them didn't.
And then the one of them that was there, they found a whole bunch of racist
shit that she
had put on Twitter.
And they're, like, hey.
And then not even jokes.
Just, like, racist stuff.
It's, like, god damn it.
I get what's going on.
These are, like, they're humans.
Humans are flawed, and, you know, just because they said a thing that was
incorrect doesn't
mean that they're, whatever position they have, they can't have a good
perspective on
something.
Yeah, and what kills me about that example is at that very moment that that was
going on,
right?
That there was this, like, super hyped up, you know, walkout that, like, got
all this attention.
There was, like, you know, two people on their lunch break or whatever.
Like, at the same time, there was the John Deere strike going on, and that was,
you know,
thousands of people, you know, were out on strike to, you know, to get better,
you know,
wages and working conditions.
John Deere, the tractors?
Yeah, yep, yep, the workers.
I've never heard of that.
Yeah, yeah, if you go back.
I believe you, but, I mean, I've never heard a peep out of that.
Yeah, well, that's the thing, right?
So, like, you compare the scale of the two things, and then you compare the
scale of the
coverage.
Right, one of them is jokes.
But it's also jokes from the greatest living comedian.
That's part of the problem.
It's like, you, and also a guy who you sort of associate with left-wing values
and progressive
values, and you want him to fall in line.
And I think that's part of the blowback, is that, you know, they want to shame
him into
falling in line with their ideals.
And one of the things that he said, like, when we talked about the special, and
this is,
we did a show together, and he did this speech at an arena, and he's like, like,
I am not
going to comply with the way you, you know, want me to think and want me to
behave.
That's not what I'm doing.
Yeah, and again, like, what's his response going to be realistically?
Like, he's just going to, like...
Keep talking shit.
That's what he's going to do.
Right.
It's going to be funnier and