Dave Chappelle Horrified To Learn He's No Funnier Than Lauren Boebert
What anti-trans humor gets you.
Dave Chappelle is very disappointed with right-wingers who unreasonably hate trans people — no, seriously.
“I did resent that the Republican Party ran on transgender jokes,” Chapelle told NPR Newsmakers host Michael Martin. “You know, I felt like they were doing a weaponized version of what I was doing. That’s not what I was doing.”
For those of us not suffering from advanced-stage Memento disease, Chappelle’s statement seems hard to accept. Chappelle dedicated a significant portion of his recent stand-ups special to — well, I wouldn’t actually call them “jokes” so much as bigoted, angry rants about trans people.
During his 2021 Netflix special, The Closer, Chapelle defended Dolores Umbridge herself, JK Rowling, over her (repeated, seemingly ceaseless) attacks against trans people.
“They canceled JK Rowling — my God,” Chapelle lamented. “Effectually she said gender was fact, the trans community got mad as shit, they started calling her a TERF … I’m team TERF.”
This isn’t a transgender joke, by the way. It doesn’t start with “knock knock,” and there’s not even a distasteful question in there involving “screwdrivers” and “light bulbs.”
“Gender is a fact,” Chapelle said — still not making actual jokes. “Every human being in this room, every human being on Earth, had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth. This is a fact.” This is a reductive view of gender that also suggests Chapelle has never seen a production of Macbeth. (Watch the version with Sir Ian McKellan and Dame Judi Dench below.)
Chappelle vowed in The Closer that he wouldn’t tell another joke about the LGBTQ community until “we are both sure that we are laughing together.” That apparently was a punchline and not a promise.
“I’m not fucking with those people anymore,” Chappelle claimed in his 2024 special The Dreamer. “It wasn’t worth the trouble. I ain’t saying shit about trans people. Maybe three or four times tonight, but that is it. Tired of talking about them. You wanna know why I’m tired of talking about ’em? Because these people acted like I needed them to be funny. Well, that’s ridiculous. I don’t need you. I’ve got a whole new angle. You guys will never see this shit coming. I ain’t doing trans jokes no more. Know what I’mma do tonight? Tonight … I’m doing all handicapped jokes. Well, they’re not as organized as the gays. And I love punching down. There’s probably a handicap in the back right now ’cause that’s where they make them sit.”
The rest of the special played out like a Jack Chick tract but without the comedy.
“God forbid I ever go to jail,” Chapelle said. “But if I do, I hope it’s in California. ‘Cause soon as the judge sentence me, I’ll be like, ‘Before you sentence me, I want the court to know… I identify as a woman. Send me… to a woman’s jail.’ As soon I get in there, you know what I’mma be doing.”
This is not a joke. It’s a confession. It’s also vile slander of a vulnerable, marginalized group. Anti-trans bigots like to conjure up the image of the imposing, muscular man in a dress “posing as a woman” so he can freely abuse women. That seems like an awful lot of work when he could just run for Congress. Chapelle doesn’t address the flip side of what he describes — trans women in confined space with men like Chappelle. That’s no punchline. It’s a horror show.
Chappelle was never just making “jokes.” He was openly advocating against trans people. This isn’t like a comedian or comedy writer expressing regret about anti-trans jokes in 1990s sitcoms or movies. There is a big difference between “She’s a man, baby!” and Chapelle proudly declaring himself “Team TERF” with JK Rowling.
Chappelle doesn’t express any actual remorse for his obsessively anti-trans commentary. He just doesn’t enjoy keeping company with his fellow travelers in bigotry.
“I’ll give you an example,” Chappelle told NPR. “Before I learned the phrase, ‘I respectfully decline,’ I was on Capitol Hill, and everybody ran up to take pictures with me from every congressional office. And I just take pictures with whoever asked. I didn’t ask how they vote or what their voting record is.”
“At first, it was CBC [Congressional Black Caucus] people,” he went on. “Then here comes Lauren Boebert and she said, ‘Can I get a picture?’ And I had already taken 40 pictures. I didn’t want to say no in front of everybody, but I didn’t know the phrase ‘I respectfully decline.’ So I just took the picture. And then she posted the picture before I could even get from there to the show and says something to the effect of, ‘Just two people that know that it’s just two genders.’ Just instantly, like, weaponized or politicized. So I got to the arena, and I lit her ass up for doing that. And she should never do that to a person like me.”
Chappelle seems more offended that Boebert actually told a joke — a mean-spirited, offensive one but it was at least in the restricted neighborhood of a joke. After all, if Chappelle’s trenchant “Gender is a fact” and “Team TERF” lines were just savage humor, then why would he consider Boebert’s riff on his material “weaponized” or “political”?
It’s possible that Chappelle’s ego is greater than his intelligence. After all, in 2022, he invited his billionaire buddy Elon Musk onto the stage with him during a show, and the audience promptly booed Musk because he sucks.
“You notice one thing?” Chappelle told Musk. “All the people that are booing have terrible seats.”
That was probably a joke. I’ll give him that. It was just mean, which is why both Dave Chappelle and Lauren Boebert are more suited for an open-mic night at the Chuckles Hut than whatever it is they actually do.
<<“Every human being in this room, every human being on Earth, had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth. This is a fact.”>>
My three C-section kids would be surprised to learn that.
"Anti-trans bigots like to conjure up the image of the imposing, muscular man in a dress “posing as a woman” so he can freely abuse women. That seems like an awful lot of work when he could just run for Congress."
Now THAT'S a joke!