Dave Chappelle has released a new Netflix special, The Dreamer, which is full of jokes about the trans community and disabled people.
“I love punching down!” he tells the audience, in a one-hour show that landed on the streaming service today (31 December).
It’s his seventh special for Netflix and comes two years after his last one, the highly controversial release The Closer.
That programme was criticised for its relentless jokes about the trans community, and Chappelle revisits the topic in his new show.
He tells jokes about trans women in prison, and about trans people “pretending” to be somebody they are not.
Comedy is part of a conversation, all art is, an artist is using their medium to say something. He has a massive platform and he is choosing to encourage even more hate against trans people. Even if his jokes about it weren’t so played out and dumb there are endless things he could joke about. It’s an asshole move and he chooses this topic probably because he knows it riles people up, because he is lazy and has nothing better to joke about.
He is one of the GOATs if you look at his history and he probably can still make good jokes about better topics if he chose to. Massive assholes have had huge crowds plenty throughout history, it just proves that plenty of people are dicks too.