Comedian Dave Chappelle attacked on stage while performing at Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles

Comedian Dave Chappelle was attacked during a show in Los Angeles Tuesday night after a man reportedly jumped on stage. The alleged attacker was injured in the attack and was carried away in an ambulance, according to reports.

Videos of the incident appear to show the man jumping onto the stage at the Hollywood Bowl, where Chappell was performing his standup routine for his Netflix Is A Joke tour, when he attempted to tackle the comedian.

He was swiftly taken away by security and other individuals, who appeared to repeatedly hit the man just off-stage, videos appear to show.

Immediately following the attack, Chappelle remained on stage and thanked security, before joking about the incident and describing the individual who attacked him as a "trans man."

Chappelle makes several jokes about the trans community in his standup routine and even boasted during Tuesday night’s performance that he has been recently forced to increase his security amid new threats.

Another video appeared to show the attacker being carted away by paramedics, with a crowd of people booing and cussing at him. Several police and emergency response vehicles could be seen at the venue in various videos.

At least one individual who was armed with a gun and knife was taken into custody, following the attack, police said.

When I saw the 1975 movie Nashville, in which a female country singer is shot while performing and bleeds all over her white dress, I felt a chill. This type of thing had not happened in America before. Assassinations had been attempted or succeeded against political targets, not entertainers. The movie pre-dated the assassination of John Lennon in 1980. The director of Nashville, Robert Altman, was questioned by the Washington Post as to whether his film had sparked a copycat killing. He denied all responsibility.

There are some scenes that are "thought porn", and should not be allowed out without an X-rating. Since WW2, Hollywood has been on a spree of pushing increasingly degraded or horrific scenes and fighting for the G, PG and PG-13 ratings that would guarantee the widest audiences.

I felt the same way in 1963 about It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, in which hundreds of thousands of 1963 dollars' worth of cars and properties were crashed and wrecked onscreen, a first-of-its-kind that has been widely copied since; and also about the 1996 film Independence Day, the first I recall that featured graphically realistic coordinated destruction of New York, Los Angeles and Washington, DC—pre-dating 9/11.

Some things cannot be unseen. Altman claimed the moral high ground by suggesting that his vision should have been taken as a warning. I think that's crap.

In the midst of the current free-speech debates, the idea of film censorship is bound to seem particularly antiquated. I do not think that a ratings system is quite the same as censorship, however. I view it more as consumer protection. What is lost in today's society is the idea that we must all agree on some limits for the protection of society itself. That would include our military defense and police as well as the minds of our citizenry and resident aliens, and particularly children.

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