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Dave Chappelle lets rude crowd have it, sticks up for Cosby's comment.
Sacramento Bee ^ | 06/17/04 | JIM CARNES

Posted on 06/18/2004 10:06:42 PM PDT by Pikamax

Chappelle lets rude crowd have it

By JIM CARNES, Sacramento Bee

(June 17, 9:04 am PDT) - Dave Chappelle got so angry with the crowd Tuesday night at Sacramento's Memorial Auditorium that the stand-up comic walked off the stage for nearly two minutes. Upon his return, he told the audience, "You people are stupid."

What got the comic so riled up? According to Chappelle, it was audience members who wouldn't "shut up and listen - like you're supposed to."

Chappelle is the creator and star of the No. 1-rated show on Comedy Central. It's that fame that helped the comic sell out the nearly 4,000-seat Memorial Auditorium weeks in advance of the show. And that popularity also caused the frustration for the performer, as audience members continually shouted a character's catchphrase from "Chappelle's Show" - it starts, "I'm Rick James ..." and ends with the b-word.

"The show is ruining my life," Chappelle told the crowd. Besides requiring him to work "20 hours a day," he said, it has made him a "star," which has resulted in the inability of fans to treat him as an individual.

"This (stand-up) is the most important thing I do, and because I'm on TV, you make it hard for me to do it," he said.

"People can't distinguish between what's real and fake. This ain't a TV show. You're not watching Comedy Central. I'm real up here talking."

Shouts continued to interrupt Chappelle's routine until he stopped to give a lecture on "how comedy usually works: I say something. You mull it over and decide whether you want to laugh or not, and then you do or not. Then I say something else, and you think about that.

"It's worked well all across the country, but you people ..."

Performing in Sacramento, the comic said, might turn out "to be a bad idea - like chocolate-covered fish."

Chappelle told the crowd he knew why they liked his sketch-comedy show: "Because it's good. You know why my show is good? Because the network officials say you're not smart enough to get what I'm doing, and every day I fight for you. I tell them how smart you are. Turns out, I was wrong.

"You people are stupid."

Much of Chappelle's act - with its jokes about genitals,and sex talk, tales of strip-club escapades and frequent use of the n-word - is unprintable in a family newspaper. But that's not the best part, anyway. Chappelle is most effective when he ventures into social commentary - race, poverty, the cult of personality.

One of his better rants had to do with children and at what age they might be responsible for their own lives. Elizabeth Smart, the 15-year-old Utah girl who was kidnapped from her home, figured prominently in the commentary. He contrasted her case - she was discovered about nine months after her abduction only a few miles from her home - with that of 7-year-old Erica Pratt, who gnawed through her duct tape bindings to free herself from kidnappers in Philadelphia and was responsible for the arrest of the two men who had taken her. Pratt is African American, and her story received much less attention than did Smart's.

Then Chappelle placed Smart's case in opposition to that of Lionel Tate of Florida, who was convicted of murder in the death of a 6-year-old neighbor. Smart, at 15, was considered a child. But at 14, two years after the crime, Tate was sentenced as an adult to life in prison without parole. (A previously rejected plea bargain was later accepted, and he is now free.)

"When is a 15-year-old a kid and a 12-year-old an adult?" he asked, indicating it might be because one was white and one was not.

Chappelle said race relations are at such a low point in America that, "You can't say anything real when it comes to race. That's why Bill Cosby's in such trouble for saying black folks have got to take responsibility for their own lives.

"I spoke at my high school last week," he said, "and I told them, 'You've got to focus. Stop blaming white people for your problems.' "

He then added, sarcastically, " 'Learn to play basketball, tell jokes or sell crack. That's the only way I've seen people get out.' "

Chappelle's harshest words were addressed to those audience members who worship entertainers and athletes.

"Stop listening to celebrities," he said. "They do what they do for money - that's all. I don't even know why you're listening to me. I've done commercials for both Coke and Pepsi. Truth is, I can't even taste the difference, but Pepsi paid me last, so there it is."

Celebrity worship harms the object of affection as well, Chappelle said. "One day people love you more than they've ever loved anything in the world. And the next, you're in front of a courthouse dancing on top of a car."

In case the audience didn't get the reference to Michael Jackson, he said, "You know why Michael Jackson's had so many surgeries? He wanted you to like him more."

Chappelle, obviously, will not pander to his fans. "You guys are the worst listeners in the country," he told the Sacramento audience. "It's like 'The Silence of the Lambs.' Without the silence."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
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To: The KG9 Kid

I LOVE the Wayne Brady Show. I don't think he is a conservative but he didn't win any points when he wouldn't let a hollyweird actor trash Dubya.


41 posted on 06/18/2004 10:44:43 PM PDT by cyborg
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To: cryptical

the real world was great, but was it newark?


42 posted on 06/18/2004 10:44:45 PM PDT by bigghurtt (Ich bin ein konservatives...dieses Mittel, die ich immer Recht.)
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To: eastforker

How did you get that?


43 posted on 06/18/2004 10:45:20 PM PDT by cyborg
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To: cyborg

It was pretty vicious, but the brat is still a kid at 12 years....


44 posted on 06/18/2004 10:45:45 PM PDT by Porterville (Fight Communism, vote Republican- and piss on france)
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To: eastforker

What?


45 posted on 06/18/2004 10:46:15 PM PDT by Porterville (Fight Communism, vote Republican- and piss on france)
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To: eastforker

What?


46 posted on 06/18/2004 10:46:33 PM PDT by Porterville (Fight Communism, vote Republican- and piss on france)
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To: cyborg

If I told ya I'd have to kill ya.


47 posted on 06/18/2004 10:46:34 PM PDT by eastforker (All those in favor of abortion have already been born. Ronald Reagan)
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To: eastforker

What?


48 posted on 06/18/2004 10:46:45 PM PDT by Porterville (Fight Communism, vote Republican- and piss on france)
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To: cyborg; Chunga
The one that really got me laughing was the one where he mocked R.Kelly to smithereens! He was singing one of R.Kelly's songs, and basically just made fun of Kelly (the joke was directed at Kelly's penchant for having sex with underage girls and sprinkling them with urine .....and Chapelle basically tore Kelly apart).

Laughter almost throttled me! LOL

49 posted on 06/18/2004 10:46:56 PM PDT by spetznaz (Nuclear missiles: The ultimate Phallic symbol.)
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To: eastforker

What?


50 posted on 06/18/2004 10:47:00 PM PDT by Porterville (Fight Communism, vote Republican- and piss on france)
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To: eastforker

Okay!!!


51 posted on 06/18/2004 10:47:15 PM PDT by Porterville (Fight Communism, vote Republican- and piss on france)
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To: Porterville

An overzealous verdict it seems. I don't get it but what are you going to do with a 12 yr old who kills someone? That's another thread altogether!


52 posted on 06/18/2004 10:48:51 PM PDT by cyborg
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To: The KG9 Kid

How about the white family named the N-word.... that split a rib


53 posted on 06/18/2004 10:48:59 PM PDT by Porterville (Fight Communism, vote Republican- and piss on france)
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To: eastforker

LOL okay ;-)


54 posted on 06/18/2004 10:49:12 PM PDT by cyborg
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To: spetznaz

Yeah and R.Kelly never lived that down *lol*


55 posted on 06/18/2004 10:50:02 PM PDT by cyborg
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To: Skywalk

yo, skywalk, they're talking about your boy over here...


56 posted on 06/18/2004 10:53:56 PM PDT by radiohead
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To: Diplomat
I was thinking the same thing. I opened this thread after 39 replies and was curious if anyone was going to catch that. I also kept waiting to see the Cosby reference but never did.

However, I must say that Chappelle is very funny. If you want to laugh you're ass off, go rent half-baked, a modern day Cheech and Chong type movie. If you are like me and grew up in the late seventies or early eighties, you will relate.

57 posted on 06/18/2004 10:56:54 PM PDT by KMG365
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

No he made himself what he is. His fans simply respond positively to who he is.


58 posted on 06/18/2004 10:57:11 PM PDT by Straight Vermonter (06/07/04 - 1000 days since 09/11/01)
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To: El Conservador

I bought it. I watched most of it. Only about 1 out of 5 skits were funny. The rest were just stupid potty-humor. I'll sell the double disc set to the first person that sends me postage in the mail.


59 posted on 06/18/2004 10:58:05 PM PDT by Flightdeck (Procrastinate later)
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

What's really amazing is that people pay to see Chappelle because he speaks the truth. He just happens to have a sense of humor with it.


60 posted on 06/18/2004 10:59:19 PM PDT by swheats
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