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Comedians are often getting into metaphorical hot water as the nature of comedy, good comedy that is, is to push the boundaries of taste, hopefully exploring unspoken or unconsidered truths, while bringing laughter to their audiences. Of course, if you are flying your craft at the edge of the envelope, then occasionally you’ll end up on the bad side of the curve and lose control. Then it is a question whether you can recover or if you crash and burn.
I cannot say that I am overly familiar with the stand-up work of Dave Chappelle. I have caught a couple jokes and set ups back in the day when one surfed channels instead of websites, but never found his material so compelling as to stop my thumb from pressing the button and moving on. I know Chappelle’s work best as the on-screen sidekick to Tom Hanks in the rom-com You’ve Got Mail. Chappelle has a couple of times now broken out of the comedy section of popular media and into the political discourse having angered some faction and drawn their verbal fire for material that they considered “over the line”, most recently from the right for his observation that murdered conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s afterlife is one in Hell. It has been reported that Chappelle said that since Charlie Kirk’s murder he has “feels better.” Well, no one is compelled to feel bad for any person’s murder. Charitable thoughts are not an obligation. If that is the sum total of Chappelle’s jab at Charlie Kirk, well, in my opinion that is unimaginative, pedestrian, and frankly hardly worth a moment’s consideration, but Charlie Kirk is a venerated martyr of the right, and any disparagement is met with fury and indignation. But that reaction is far from righteous.
Chappelle, however, is a perfect illustration of why any moral outrage from the right can be safely and utterly ignored as their sensitivities are attuned only to their own, with no consideration for anyone beyond their own tribe, and why their indignation is merely another tool, another weapon, in their arsenal to dominate and claim a victorious victimhood.
Just a few years ago Chappelle was once again drawing verbal fire for the insensitivity of his material. When that firestorm erupted around his work, conservatives defended the comedian, proclaiming that comedy must be allowed to be transgressive, to push the boundaries of good taste, and that those who complained with overly sensitive snowflakes unable to take a joke. At that time it was material that used the trans community as Chappelle’s punching bag, not conservative blowhards, and the political left found nothing funny in those routines. It is even reported that Charlie Kirk defended Chappelle’s trans-oriented humor, but of course such defenses cannot extend to humor when it is turned against conservatives. Insensitivities are only allowed when they are aimed at the proper targets.
The right’s defense of Chappelle’s routine had nothing to do with the transgressive nature of comedy and everything to do with seeing a community of which they did not approve of come under some sort of attack. Now that Chappelle is making jokes at the expense of one of theirs, suddenly taste and decorum are the law of the land.
This hypocrisy of the right is not confined to the stand-up’s stage but is playing out as we speak in the electoral fallout of the 2026 midterm elections. Amy Acton, the governor-elect of Ohio, has refused to take the concession call from the Republican she defeated in that contest, Vivek Ramaswamy, sending it directly to voicemail, an action that has drawn more “indignation” from the right for its “disrespectful” nature. But this is just another example from the seemingly endless list of Republican hypocrisies. In a last-minute and desperate act to try and save a campaign that was already failing, Ramaswamy seized on Acton’s mother, who was elderly and, by reports, living in her car, using this woman to cut an ad attacking Acton as a liar. Acton’s mother, according to documentation and reports from the time, fled with the man who sexually assaulted Acton when she was just twelve, choosing him over her daughter. In my opinion, Acton is rightly justified in refusing to speak with Ramaswamy and the Republican “outrage” is just the asymmetrical yardstick that they want to play by. They, the GOP, want to be as mean, as cruel as they wish, as untruthful as they wish, making vile lies about entire communities, while demanding that they be treated with a courtesy and respect that they show to no one but their own.
I do believe that it is pointless to confront conservatives with their hypocrisy. They do not care and will never acknowledge it or change their nature. Revealing their nature is useful only in affecting those who might be swayed by it, those people who are ignorant of the right’s tactics, and not in any manner those who engage in it.
Chappelle is a perfect example of this: he is their hero when he makes their “enemies” the butt of his jokes, and he is a devil when he turns that same fire on their own. Conservative “outrage” is not anything worthy of thought or consideration except as a weapon that they wield in pursuit of power.
