Dave Chappelle is honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday, Oct. 27, 2019, in Washington. (Photo by Owen Sweeney/Invision/AP)

Comedian Dave Chappelle was in New York Sunday evening to accept the Mark Twain Prize for American humor and had this to say . . .

“I want everyone in America right now to look at me. Look at me smoking indoors,” the guest of honor bragged. “I didn’t ask anybody… What are they gonna do? Kick me out before I get the prize?”

He added: “It’s called leverage.”

He would later thank the Fire Marshal “for having the courage to let me be myself.”

Chappelle informed the audience “I did not write a speech.” During his impromptu remarks, he defended freedom of speech when talking about comedians he knows who are “very racist.”

“(I) don’t get mad at ’em, don’t hate on ’em,” he said. “Man, it’s not that serious. The First Amendment is first for a reason. Second Amendment is just in case the First one doesn’t work out.”

– Erin Jensen in Dave Chappelle gets Mark Twain Prize, says comedy career ‘saved my life’

49 COMMENTS

    • Dave lives in rural ohio, in his most recent standup he describes a the event that caused him to buy and keep firearms at home. Someone walked through his property open carrying a rifle. Because he lives in a rural area he realized police were a long way away. If that person was a threat, Dave wouldn’t be able to protect him or his family. Now Dave is prepared, good for Dave.

      • That whole bit with the white guy behind the gun counter and the shotgun loads was hilarious. And it definitely hit close to home.

        • Oh, OK, I have a copy I torrented awhile back, but haven’t watched yet…

        • I believe it is his Sticks and Stones special. Definitely hilarious but I couldn’t help get a little annoyed. Essentially it boiled down to “I saw a white guy who wasn’t threatening anyone. I need a gun!!”

          Totally support his rights and please keep pushing the 2nd as much as possible HOWEVER… if you took his joke and reversed the races of everyone involved just imagine the holy hell of a shit storm that would have ensued. Oh well… guess Dave gets to enjoy his black privilege.

        • Blazin’, he hated being unarmed, if you back to the bit; a perfectly valid observation.

          “Because I was unarmed…I just smiled & waved to the trespasser, like a bitch!”

          Everyone is most fearful/defensive of people that aren’t like them, that’s human nature. For a well to do black man, that’s gonna be a heroine-addicted white tweaker, as described in his bit. Plus there was the whole meta aspect to the situation, when everyone I including Chappelle knows the stereotype is a white dude paranoid of black crackheads…which is precisely what the gun counter guy was representing.

        • If a white comedian made some joke about assuming black people were crack smoking ne’er-do-wells and spoke of how he went out and bought a gun the instant he saw another black person in his neighborhood he would be subject to immense public scorn.

          Ironically enough, his special actually was subject to SJW contempt however no one mentioned the joke we are discussing. Again, I laughed throughout, my problem is with an egregious societal double standard.

  1. That’s doesn’t surprise me actually. If you watch his comedy from 20 years ago a lot of it makes fun of what would become the current SJW, nanny state, hyper feminist, sissy male culture that’s dominant on the left. I’m kinda surprised he hasn’t been ostracized by the left yet.

    • Oh he has been

      The Leftists in entertainment reviews gave him terrible reviews in his last special. But the audience score was like 95 %

      • Rotten tomatoes has it at 35% critics score (17 critic reviews) and 99% audience score (with 40,0000 audience reviews).

        • I’ve noticed that movie / tv critics have come out of the closet as close-minded leftists. They’ve probably always been that way, but everything wasn’t always politicized so much.

      • Critics are what they’ve always been. Here’s a tidbit about Nixon’s election from Pauline Kael, late film critic from the New Yorker:

        “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”

        This has sometime been reported as: “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”

  2. Loved his show back in the day, and love the way he rejects leftist PC BS. He probably wouldn’t be able to get away with that if he was white since the left is all about skin color, with white being the worst.

  3. Winced several times when watching his latest comedy special due to all the vulgarity, but conservative outlets were recommending it due to his rejection of “cancel culture” and political correctness. Hearing his support for free speech and gun rights was great…his pro-abortion comments, not so much.

    • Ah! Freedom for me, but not for thee, right? BTW, *no one* is pro abortion, there are simply those who are pro choice, for the event where birth control has failed, and those who are anti choice for everyone except themselves and their children.

      • “Freedom for me, but not for thee, right?”
        ****
        Really? Whose freedom? Are you speaking on behalf of the innocent baby in the womb who has no chance of defending itself from the tools coming closer to tear it apart, or the mother who wants it removed out of emotional or financial inconvenience? Most men have an innate desire to protect and defend others.

        So you’re actually advocating freedom for THEE, Larry, but not for others. Hypocrite much?

        • “Most men have an innate desire to protect and defend others”

          This brings up something I’ve always wondered about. Do men have any reproductive rights? Isn’t that the man’s baby just as much as the woman’s? How can some girl decide to have that “procedure” without my consent?? Equal rights anyone? The man gets no say? Freedom for thee but not for me?

      • Look up “Shout Your Abortion”
        Those people are pushing the idea of being proud of abortion. I knew several girls that got an abortion when I was younger. I’m sure I knew plenty more, but it isn’t something most people talk about. In each one of those cases, birth control wasn’t used. It turns out there is a 100% failure rate when not used. Also, in each one of those cases those girls were severely traumatized afterwards. That’s something that the pro-abortion crowd intentionally hides from young girls. Why would they hide that? Because more abortion equals more money equals more power. Follow the money.

        As far as painting a black and white picture of for and against, I’m sure there is some middle ground to be had that would benefit everyone. Unfortunately, that would mean admitting that there are downsides, which the abortion industry and their political backers won’t admit to.

        • When i was in HS I dated a girl who had a abortion. She was raped by a family member and was pushed into having the abortion by her mom. Having a abortion messed her mind up to the point that she let it ruin her whole life. She started using drugs and staying in trouble with the law. Was a bad deal all the way around.

        • One of my high school friends (way back in the ’80s) was promiscuous – a real hottie who rebelled against her strict parents – and unfortunately got an abortion during her senior year. Messed her up so much that when she reconnected with me and my wife 20 years later, she confessed it and was crying while telling us all the horrible decisions she had made since then and all the heartache and broken relationships she endured. She said it all started with the trauma of killing her baby so her parents wouldn’t find out she was sleeping around.

          Abortion isn’t the easy way out the media paints it to be. Hurts the mother, and kills the baby.

      • Larry,

        In this video, the young man asks college students if they’ll support a measure protecting baby animals. They all emphatically say yes. He then asks if they’ll protect human babies. They all emphatically say yes. He then clarifies that the second measure is for the protection of unborn babies, and most of them halt. Some even say the words “I’m pro abortion”.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR9Ye_Uk-x8

    • that was raging anti abortion by calling their hypocrisy into the light of womans “choice” but no choice for father??

    • People don’t understand that comedy is no different than film. It’s hyperbolic, it’s shock, it’s meant to invite people’s emotions. However, it’s generally not anywhere close to reality. It’s entertainment.

    • Actually, if you listen to his comments about abortion in his special “Sticks and Stones,” he’s making feminists own their position in totality:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoudH-RPnEE

      “If I’m wrong, then maybe we’re wrong.”

      He very cleverly sucked the females in the audience into his logic trap, and then sprung it on them.

  4. Ohhh this guys career in Hollywood is SO SO VERY OVER!

    there is no way the sheepeople let him off with that statement!

    • His career is once again ascending. Why? Because his Netflix series was incredibly popular. He’s done another since then, and is slated to do more.
      What were the topics? Guns, why the me-too movement is going about it all wrong, how he supports, but doesn’t understand and will continue to make fun of the lgbtq community, racism and the pettiness of identity politics.
      As a matter of fact, he even grabs the 3rd rail, showing the hypocrisy of the “right to choose.”
      It’s not as funny as the Dave Chappelle Show, but it is genius. His comment that the solution for healing from racism in America is actually found in Africa was so deep and so smart I think of it often, still trying to wrap my head around the completeness of his statement.
      He lays the problems of our nation out, right at the beginning of either the first or second special. He says: “America has become a bunch of bitch-ass-niggers.” And damned if that aint spot on.

      • Most of the great comedians are social commentators who point out our hypocrisies and falacies through humor..

  5. I’m surprised Chappelle even has a gig after he screwed Comedy Central. His pro-baby murder spiel prevents me from being a “fan”.

    • From his last special:
      My stance on abortion depends on who I get pregnant. I support the right to choose, but I also support my right to have nothing to do with that baby. Come on, you want to kill it, I just want to abandon it. Maybe I’m wrong. But maybe if I’m wrong, we’re wrong.

      Genius.

      • If you don’t believe you would want to have a child with a particular woman don’t have sex with her. It won’t be an issue. Remember, no matter what method of birth control used there is still the chance.

        • I married the girl I knocked up. A good idea?!? Dunno but he’s 45 and a father of 3. Speaks Arabic.Works at the pentagon. MAYBE even helped Taylor not die for “Murica. I may even have a kid out there in their 30’s. I’ve told my wife of 30 years I would recognize him/her and support them. I’m happy my girlfriend didn’t murder my son!

        • Those are Chappell’s words, not mine.
          I think a whole lot of people missed his point. The same folks that say it’s a woman’s choice to kill a baby are the same one’s that say a father has no choice but to support it.
          Chappell was pointing out that hypocrisy with his “But maybe if I’m wrong, we’re wrong.”
          So if he’s wrong for wanting to abandon a child he didn’t want, they’re wrong for wanting to kill the child they didn’t want.

  6. He’s an interesting person and proof that even with cancel culture people are hungering for something different. Him along with Kanye (I never thought I would say it) are deep cracks appearing in the wall the left has built around the culture.

    I keep joking about the idea that the most controversial heavy metal album you could produce would be one that espoused conservative values. Oddly, Kanye may have done it in rap form.

    As much as they think there’s a corner on the market, I think it’s a dangerous time for leftism and cancel culture at large. Look back at how the cracks in mcarthyism formed. It didn’t take much of a nudge after someone said the emperor had no clothes.

  7. I haven’t seen it, but he uses stereotypes all the time. Check out the stand up routine where he gets high with a white guy and the cops come around.

  8. Chappelle is the modern Richard Pryor and his comedy reflects a lot of Pryor did. They both took on free speech, the racism that flows both ways and the hypocrisy that exists in the world. I find the humor spot on and the language, although crude does convey a point in its use.

  9. Well, he is a comedian so is it just “another” punch line without any weight of conviction?
    He tosses out what he considers an “acceptable field of racism”. This is no different than people of Color or Ethnicity routinely using “terms” that would be “racist” if communicated by a person outside those parameters. Another double standard, so why think there is anything of substance in his 2A punch line.

    He has also stated “Only Blacks can disarm America Whites” There you go.

  10. What happened to people going to shows, movies, gigs, whatever, enjoying it for what it is: a show. It’s not meant to be taken seriously. It’s not a Dennis Prager lecture, it’s not a news interview. I say a lot of stupid shit I don’t mean in an attempt to make people laugh. Most of the time it works, but doesn’t mean I believe it wholeheartedly.

    A lot of people on here complain about the left and their outrage culture, yet are saying the same things on the other side of the spectrum. It’s entertainment. Watch, listen, laugh for an hour, then go about your life. Chappelle is a comedy genius, and people want to watch and listen because he’s funny, not because he’s a master of political or social enlightenment.

    His special titled “Sticks and Stones” is more the lesson than any of the actual material. Words don’t hurt you, calm down.

  11. Turns out this will be an appropriate post due to the tone of a ton of the comments.
    I just read an article by some genetic scientists. They say they have found the birthplace of all humanity. Botswana Africa. That being the case and to the shame of some supposedly white supremacist… WE ALL AFRICAN AMERICANS. LMAO

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