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."
Let's just make sure the blame goes where it belongs. On the MEDIA.
The same media we complain about all day long.
They pound away at their chosen stories incessently.
They ascribe their zeal to the public "interest", but it's really just about tabloid journalism and making money the lazy way.
Yup...the liberal media that claims to be so 'open minded'.
I must admit that I like Chapelle, my little brother turned me onto him....best after the kiddies are asleep and mom/granny isn't spending the night.
he reminds me of early Pryor or maybe a little Redd Fox....very sharp...no doubt he is eccentric and mercurial.
That danged blind black klansman skit is about the most outrageous thing I have seen in years.....he must be wicked to have dreamt that up and the closing line is very very un-pc but I about fell off the sofa.
Now to be fair, he usually treats white folks like bumbling idiots at best and knuckledragger racists at worst but to his credit he is pretty evenhanded.
Those pimp/gs that travel thru time are damned funny too.
He's simply way way out there....not like Jonanthan Winters but out there like that....in his own universe.
I haven't watched his show lately. Even on cable, he's a bit too far out for me.
That was outstanding. "I divorced her because..."
Yep...and that closing line out of nowhere while so un-pc about killed me.
Chapelle is wicked.
The skit last week about interchanging Enron defendants with crack dealer defendants was funny.
When he tells the bewildered white guy to "nut up, we'll have you in a do-rag and converting to Islam before ya know it" as he goes into the joint.
lotsa peckerwoods in his audience too...just like in the salad days of Pryor, Cosby, Murphy and Foxx....hope he doesn't implode.
ah come on...live a little..lol
damn....everybody knows that one.
about the most outrageous line I've seen in comedy in over a decade...totally out of the blue.
how he dreamt that up is scary..lol
I sound like an ole 'faht' before I'm old *lol*
My bad, it was Mad Real World: Hoboken.
ML has psychotic episodes doesn't he?
Elizabeth Smart was only 14 when abducted.She was bound, abused, and held in a hole for a lengthy period before beginning her wanderings with her abductors. By that time brainwashing or Stockholm syndrome had taken its toll and she was unable to take advantage of opportunites to escape.It was unfair to contrast her conduct unfavorably with that of the seven-year-old who fortunaely was able to escape in the first few hours of her abduction.
"The UN should sanction us with their army... oh wait they don't have an army! So they should shut f^<k up!"
What a way to end a career on the fast track by going out swinging.
Ever see Chris Rock's "How Not To Get Your Ass Kicked By The Police?"
"If I told ya I'd have to kill ya."
Tell my wife.
You're right. It's amazing that such a detail is usually ommitted from media reports. I mean, we're grateful to God either way, but it's nice that the black community might have one more hero, particularly a 7 year old who defeats two fiends. I praise her either way, but it's a positive message for many people. Obviously there are people who don't want to promote positive messages to that community. *cough* *liberal media* *cough*...
I really don't know anything about this guy or his politics but two things are clear, he's funny as hell and anyone who want to look can see he's very, very bright.
It sounds like he has some of the same problems with the lamesteam media that we do.
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