Dave Chappelle Shows Hecklers The Love

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There’s something kind of evil about the joy in which some people have reveled in putting Dave Chappelle under a microscope during his recent encounters with hecklers in Hartford, CT and Knoxville, TN, two places that could not be more different. But while in Chicago, Chappelle starting giving the love back.  Two notable quotes:

  • “If North Korea ever drops a nuclear bomb on this country, I swear to God, I hope it lands in Hartford, Connecticut.”
  • He called Hartford’s crowd a bunch of “young, white, alcoholics.”

And all this is very controversial apparently but here’s the video of the Chicago beatdown.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxZ49nibXoo&w=584&h=390]

“I wanted to pull a ‘reverse Kramer’ and call them all ‘crackers’ or something like that,” he also said, referring to an infamous n-word-laden stand-up set by comedian Michael Richards in 2006.

“And you know that crowd feels lucky when they got to see me freak out,” he said. “It’s just like being at a (f-ing) tiger show the night Siegfried and Roy got their throats bit out by tigers. It’s (f-ed) up, and I know deep down that’s why you go to a tiger show. You don’t go to see somebody be safe.”

It’s Chappelle’s comeback tour and I can understand some people wanting to test him but what I don’t understand is the hate. Certainly he’s reached a point in his career where he’s the headliner of headliners and while I can understand some people’s expectation that he should be able to “handle” hecklers these were situations where it wasn’t just one or two, it was lots of people acting like a mob. Nobody should have to put up with that and not putting up with it certainly doesn’t qualify as a meltdown as some have called it.

In my opinion, Hartford got off easy. It could have gone much worse for them. He could have Bill Burr’ed them like happened in Philadelphia.

When it comes to matters of opinion, discover some of the most intriguing, informed points of view you’ll find anywhere — at The Opinionator, from The New York Times

 

image – YouTube