Chappelle's special was honestly brilliant. The more times I watch it the more convinced I am.
The Prince lyrics in the beginning. The Anthony Bourdain joke. Segway into celebrity hunting season. Michael Jackson's victims got their dick sucked by the king of pop while "most if us just got awkward thanksgivings for the rest of our lives."
Then all the **** with the alphabet people, me too, abortions... Followed by school shootings and a paranoid Dave arming himself with guns to protect his home from "heroin addicted whites."
This completely blows a hole in the idea that he did something wrong by "punching down." None of publications that attacked him cared about him relentlessly mocking poverty stricken Midwestern white drug addicts.
Why is that? We're told punching down is based in power dynamics. Those without power are considered poor taste to attack.
Yet the heroin addicted whites he mocks have zero power. There was no backlash for a couple reasons.
1) they have no advocacy groups lobbying in favor of their public image. Women have NOW. The alphabet people have glaad. Jews have the adl. Blacks have the NAACP, Muslims have cair, etc. You will have to answer to any of these groups if you portray their constituency in a way they don't approve of.
2) Dave was brilliantly flipping the racial dynamics with his material on heroin addicted whites. In a number of ways.
a) the typical idea of a gun owner who is trying to protect his property is a suburban white man paranoid about black and Hispanic criminals pulling a home invasion. Dave paints the picture if an eccentric black millionaire in MAGA country scared of heroin addicted whites breaking in to rifle through his change jar.
b) he juxtaposed the modern "opioid crisis" with the crack epidemic of the 80's and 90's, and the way our society has addressed them... Concluding "whatever happened to JUST SAY NO? What's so hard about that??"
And so, the last portion if his special, despite being more hard hitting than any other portion, flew under the radar. Because his politics were correct. This theme is present throughout the special. Repeatedly, he either dave says something over the line and outlandish and then brings it back with something acceptable, or he does the reverse.
He's constantly treading a thin tight rope to stay barely in bounds yet allowing for a reasonable suspicion otherwise.
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