I've got forty nations ready to roll with me! Coalition of the willing!
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."
It's single teenaged drop-out motherhood is also popular if you are a black American Idol.
"The Wayne Brady skit is my favorite..."
Oh I'd love to see that, I LOVE Wayne Brady, I think he's a genius.
My daughter is a big Chappel fan, she too is always going around proclaiming "I'm Rick James...!" She finally explained to me why she kept doing that.
I voted for Diana :)
I get XM Satellite and hear a lot of Chappelle's stuff. I will say that he's foul mouthed and often off base, but he is an equal-race basher. He was doing a routine the other day about how white Washington D.C. has become, and how integrated the gangs are---"You know if you see a gang of brothers with 2-3 white dudes that they are the most dangerous guys in the gang to get the respect of the brothers! Stay away from them! Also, the brothers have to have a couple of whites to talk to the po-lice when they come. 'OK, Ernie, you take this.'"
yeah you're right!
Actually, it was "Negrodamus" (Paul Mooney) who said it...
I've got forty nations ready to roll with me! Coalition of the willing!
You a Chappelle Show fan?
Those were pretty funny, but he'll never top the infamous "Rick James" episode or his skit with Wayne Brady.
Out of what? The abyss of ignorance passing itself off as culture?
Except for joining the military (Colin Powell), attending law school (Clarence Thomas), Journalism School (Oprah Winfrey), studying medicine, economics, education...
Yeaaah! What? Ohhh-KAY!
good points... After a customer of mine finished ranting and raving at me about how hollywood doesn't represent 'us folks'(a reason why he sells bootleg CDs!), I said why don't you take it up with the hollywood execs who think white people won't watch a black person in a lead role.
I suggest you turn your sarcasm detector "on".
Yep... "See, we're not racist... we always have this token 'nice, personality-free black sidekick' to prove it!" LOL
Oh, yeah. Love the show.
I haven't met him, but he went to high school with my cousin in Ohio.
I think Chappelle was being ironic rather than being supportive of Cosby's statement. He is still implying that whites are keeping blacks down save for the three ways he mentioned to get out of the ghetto. Education is not one of them.
Sarcasm detector? Isn't that a useful device.
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