Remember when we wanted Dave Chappelle to explain why he dropped out of Chappelle’s Show? Don’t you wish now that he’d just shut up about it? He’s told James Lipton, Oprah, and anyone else who will listen, and now he gets a 10-page spread in Esquire (an article you can read online for a fee) to explain what the Associated Press calls the ”cultural, professional, and personal” reasons behind his decision. The short version: He felt pressure not to do his best work (AP’s summary doesn’t specify pressure from whom). Plus, showbiz ”forces dysfunctional relationships in people” (Well, okay, but fleeing to South Africa without telling your wife or colleagues, leaving the latter all unemployed, seems kind of dysfunctional). Also, he says, white people own everything, ”and where can a black person go and be himself or say something that’s familiar to him and not have to explain or apologize?” (Uh, not Oprah, I guess, since that was a key stop on your explain-and-apologize tour.) Dude, make comedy or don’t, but quit with all the whining.
Dave Chappelle: Enough already!
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Comments (1-30) of 31 Add your comment
Dave Chappelle is not funny.
Neither is Dane Cook, but the last time i posted that on Popwatch, i was berated.
thats cause youre an idiot. dane cook is hilarious.
PREACH ON GARY!
I 100% agree with you. I can’t stand celebrities who get where they want and then run away cause “they’re scared.” It’s a BS exscuse for spoiled brats who are bored with what they have. “Too much pressure?” Take a month off! Don’t run away and then come sulking back and expect everyone to care. Cause nobody does.
all you idiots sound stupid. the show aint for white folks so i dont blame him for leaving. the first season was great, the second was ok. the powers that be obviously were messing his show up. he aint selling out for no amount of money, period.
Seriously! Thank you for saying that!!
His been sitting on his rear like a kid sulking for the last two years.
Oh boo hoo. I’m filthly rich. Boo hoo white people are holding me down.
Reality check Dave. Slavery ended a long time ago. You have more money than most white america. So do your friends.
I like your comedy but get over yourself and do something for your fans national. Doing stand up at couple clubs doesn’t cut it.
It’s so funny, this game of fame watching. It’s a spectator sport where the spectators get to decide from the sidelines how they’d behave if THEY were ever famous … but the fact is, fame is a bizarre thing that can’t be managed easily. And most of us will never get near enough to it to actually understand it.
In response to fame, we see people attached to cults, or excessive about their religious/spiritual orientation. We see people who drug out or drink out or flame out. We see people taking serial spouses. Anything to try to manage the fame in some way.
But fame is not manageable unless you’ve got a brilliant team behind you. And very few people do – most have yes men and hangers on who just make the fame worse, and more isolating.
But in recent memory, we haven’t seen someone just blow up and walk away from the fame. And we don’t know how to think about it. Clearly, Dave is still formulating his response, and trying to figure out why he did what he did. And he’s doing it in public, which is never easy. In fact, it’s awful.
Along with most of you, I love to take jabs at famous people who are absurd. But I don’t think Dave is absurd, or boring in any way. I’m totally fascinated about someone who speaks openly about racism, and about being made into a spokesperson (or a display object) for blackness, or some such thing.
Dave isn’t just carrying fame – he’s also carrying race, and let’s not ever pretend that America isn’t a racist place. He let white people into some of the hidden areas of blackness, and he has now sort of recoiled at the implications of that.
I’m sure that listening to white teenage boys or middle aged executives proclaim their Rick James-ness became very wearing, but also haunting.
Because none of us is Rick James, and wearing him as a jacket over our whiteness has definite minstrel show leanings. Dave noticed this, and my supposition is that he didn’t know how to close Pandora’s box once his comedy broke away from him and turned into a thing he didn’t recognize any more.
This is one guy dealing with two almost impossible things – not just fame, but monster fame; not just race, but racial spokeperson status – and I am still very willing to listen to him. He’s very unusual, very talented, and unique. Let’s don’t attack the only person in recent memory who tried to wrestle the eight-headed monster of fame.
And he’s damn funny. He’s also a genius, and they always do thing differently than regular schmoes do. So lay off the Dave.
But hey, let’s go make fun of Tom Cruise, who is grotesquely atttached to his fame!!!
Why is Dave Chappelle considered crazy? Because he wants to put on the show he envisions? That’s not crazy — that’s reasonable. If you can’t produce the same quality of work, then it’s probably best to walk away.
That said, I’m still hoping (even if it’s a long shot) that Dave and Comedy Central will work things out and put the show out there again. And from the Oprah interview, I think Dave doesn’t want to leave his fans out there like that. Perhaps he needs to take the show to another network, etc. But the constant explaining is too much.
If Dave had sold out a little bit and dealt with some dysfunctional relationships, he would have made many millions of dollars, and then he could own some stuff and do whatever he wanted.
jojo, you can’t objectively say someone isn’t funny. People have different senses of humor. Next time, say “I don’t think Dave Chappelle is funny.” Of course, that makes your opinion kind of irrelevant, since so many other people do think he’s funny, but there you go.
AMEN Gary! Amen!
Gee Dave, bored much? Either come back to the show or not. I for one, am sick of hearing how “wrong” it was for the white crew guy to laugh during one of the skits. Is this like the “N” word thing? Its
OK for blacks to call each other that degradng word, but if a non-black person says it, they’re racist? Funny is funny Dave, doesn’t matter what color is laughing.
Another thing that bugs me about the way Dave is acting, is how he was before he got big.
In interviews and stand-up prior to Half-Baked, he joked about how “the man” would never let him make it big. The whole “black actors” thing he was saying in the Wayne Brady sketch.
Then suddenly he makes it, and its not longer the man holding him down, no its the man restricting his creativity.
Not everyone is against you Dave. Enjoy life. There isn’t always a conspiracy.
He should get over himself, his show was hit and miss, but overall pretty funny. I’m white, and I don’t think I had any problem understanding his satire, the crewmember probably laughed hard at a joke because he thought it was really funny, Dave should have been flattered, not disappear and moan about how much it sucks to get paid 50 million dollars for his work.
I love the ‘leave Dave alone’ comments… well, we’d leave him alone if he’d stop doing the same interviews over and over again and thrusting his face in the spotlight… it’s hard to miss you if you never go away
what the hell is Dave’s crack ass talking about now? The show is just as popular with whites as it is with blacks. Funny, none of this “man holding me back” stuff was said when Comedy Central gave him free reign (I mean, look at the stuff that show got away with)! And when “the man” gave him the 50 mil contract. We get it Dave, your career is in trouble, you’re trying to get your “peeps” to rally around your “opression”. Gimmie a break!
The whole explain-and-apologize tour seems to be Dave’s plunger; trying to bring back the career he flushed away. Plenty of people (both white and black) would give their eyeteeth for just a chance at grabbing what he had a full grasp upon.
After all these interviews, the media still can’t get a decent grasp on what’s clearly going on? Jesus christ…
Its not that I don’t care about Chapelle, but at this point, it’s getting a bit tiresome. Like Gary said, get on with it or not, but end it without the rest of the world getting a headache. At the very least, he ownes that to his legion of followers.
The issue is that Dave had the opportunity to do what we wanted, and he balked at that level of commitment. Don’t get me wrong, he is an excellent comedian, one of the most successful today. But the business side was taking over, leaving him feeling drained and restricting his creative thoughts. The same thing happens with pro athletes when they fire their agents before they sign big free agent deals. The athlete thinks they can handle the businnes on and off the fied. They can’t. And it screws up their game. He needs an Eric Murphy/Kevin Connolly from Entourage to manage things.
Frankly, I hope Dave loses all of you white fans and your sense of entitlement; he’s better off. He can’t “quit whining” because you won’t let him. You want him to basically explain race relations in America, which is tough to do. Telling the same joke to a white audience and a black audience and getting the same laugh can infer VERY DIFFERENT THINGS. That is reality. Just because he’s a comedian doesn’t mean that he’s not aware, even if you’re not. He chooses not to shuffle and jive for you; read the Esquire article, deal with it, and quit YOUR whining.
Leave Dave alone! I actually admire him for having the courage to walk away from $50 million. In a day and age where greed seems to be everything, very very few people would walk away from money like that no matter what the cost. He realized that the paycheck was not worth the price it he would have to pay personally, and I give him a lot of credit for that. His wife should be thankful too, get over being “salty” and respect the man for not giving in to the corporate BS and selling his sole to the devil for money. Face it, they will never hurt for money, he is a talented actor who should go far.
Dave chappelle is the best, finally on top and you people just can’t leave him alone cause your not him stop hatin and start congraduating…
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