Dave Chappelle backlash

[PhillipBlunt]

52 minutes ago, Junkyard Dog said:

The US is &^@#ed right now and oversensitivity is everywhere, on all sides. US Politics and news became a devolving gong show that catapulted this. 
 

 It’s a shame we’re tied to a hip with them. 

Canada is in no way immune to this. 

[DrJockitch]

1 minute ago, PhillipBlunt said:

Canada is in no way immune to this. 

True but there are levels to this game.

[PhillipBlunt]

Just now, DrJockitch said:

True but there are levels to this game.

Are we at the boss level yet?

[thedestroyerofworlds]

11 minutes ago, DrJockitch said:

Cancel culture isn't new.  Book burnings to Tipper Gore, it has been used by both sides of the isle in the US.  Even as the right wing side is rallying against cancel culture now, they are they continue to be some of the worst practitioners of it.  Anyone says anything bad about Trump cancelled by the right.  At this point the lunatic wings of both party are excluding the vast majority of the actual population.

 

[Provost]

I think it is totally fair to hold people to account for what they say.

Having said that, he is a comedian.  He is doing his job, which is to be funny.  He is a black dude so it is even hard to accuse him of "punching up"... which he discussed in this special.

It is hard to watch his shows and not see that he is full of love and he just likes to make people laugh.  He describes his love for a trans friend of his in the actual act.  He doesn't hate people for being trans at all... he makes fun of the attitude of some trans people (and white people, and black people, and asians, and hispanics, and gay people, and straight people).  There is a really big distinct difference there.

[Master Mind]

How many do you think are truly offended by this, or are using it as a means to gain attention/status?

 

Instead of trying to cancel someone, I would think the best course of action is to make your own special on youtube/tiktok/whatever and share your counter points.

[Bell]

1 hour ago, Fanuck said:

Warning, this is NSFW, that said, it speaks directly to cancel culture:

 

 

Thanks for this hilarious 8 minute clip Fanuck. Chappelle is too damn funny.

[bubba6]

The thing with Comedians and entertainers of all kinds is that they really are there to push the boundaries on what makes people uncomfortable, to shock, to bring out emotions many never delve into, the highs and lows, the cringe and the ridiculous.

to neuter an artist and restrict what they can or can not us as a subject matter/canvas is detrimental to the future advancements of humanity as an empathic species.

[butters]

once again people complaining about cancel culture are a small group of people overreacting to a tiny group of people. There isn't actually much of a backlash. Stop buying into social media bull$&!#.

[The Lock]

I think the problem here is thay there's a lot of grey area and that people generally think they're right when they truly believe in something and are unwilling to think about things further.

 

So you have people like DC who made a joke based on an opinion. You have people with an opinion of DC's opinion. You have people with the opinion that DC's show could get cancelled. You have people with the opinion that that is cancel culture. This list is far from exhaustive as well. More simply put, there's not one thing that's necessarily right or wrong in this case as everything is literally based on opinion.

 

I hate how this term gets used these days, but really this is what we get with "free speech". The internet just makes all of this more prominent since everyone can project their voice to potentially millions of other people, meaning more people are likely to agree and disagree with what is said, putting all of this on a more grander scale.

 

So what's the solution to this problem? As long as people are going to have opinions.... there probably isn't one other than standing up for what you believe in.

[PetterssonOrPeterson]

1 hour ago, PhillipBlunt said:

Clearly no one should be allowed to limit what someone should do or say. Free speech should always be a thing, as should civil discourse. It would be nice if everyone felt that way.

This exactly. 

We are all different people that were raised in different households and come from a variety of cultures around the world.

 

Isn't it completely normal to have opinions or life-views on certain subjects or topics? It's pretty much a given. That's the beauty of free speech.

 

We're not generations of robots that were raised with the exact same doctrine on life, and someone is malfunctioning because their view is different. Cancel culture is insanity.

[brownky]

3 minutes ago, Provost said:

I think it is totally fair to hold people to account for what they say.

Having said that, he is a comedian.  He is doing his job, which is to be funny.  He is a black dude so it is even hard to accuse him of "punching up"... which he discussed in this special.

It is hard to watch his shows and not see that he is full of love and he just likes to make people laugh.  He describes his love for a trans friend of his in the actual act.  He doesn't hate people for being trans at all... he makes fun of the attitude of some trans people (and white people, and black people, and asians, and hispanics, and gay people, and straight people).  There is a really big distinct difference there.

It's a complicated issue with an easy separation.

 

Making fun of someone in an inclusive way is, in my opinion, the ticket to killing sexism/racism (and all the other isms). If a black dude wants to make fun of a white guy for something 'a white guy does', and is *clearly* doing so to get a laugh and not to degrade the guy or 'all white people', I don't see the problem. So say the joke is something about cargo shorts, new balance sneakers and suburban dads. It's a super easy target for 'middle age white guy', because A) You'll get my new balances from my cold dead hands because they're the only shoes that fit and last longer than 5 months on my big feet and 2) My cargo shorts simply have enough pockets for what I need to carry. It's just a generalization, and like most generalizations there's a nugget of truth. See also, rice, watermelon, cheapness, chicken, crap teeth, and so on. I'm sure most of you can associate one or more of those things to a 'group' or 'person' you know.

 

The KEY point being lost amongst all of this moral outrage is: It doesn't make me as a white dude any better or worse than "you" because I wear new balances and cargo shorts. Just like it doesn't make an Asian/Black/Latin/SpaceAlien any better or worse as people than anybody else for anything 'they' like to do. The stereotype is that Asians tend to eat a lot of rice. The only thing that means is... they eat a lot of rice. Now there are jokes to be had in that material, but there's nothing there (to me, anyway) that says anything other than 'they eat rice'. Eating rice doesn't make East Asians better at math, or Indians better at piling on moving locomotives... it just means they eat rice. The issue is when people invoke the generalizations to make wide-swath racist remarks; "Those rice/cotton/(whatever) picking/eating/(etc) blank do blank"- that's not a joke. That's belittling a group on a generalization. If a black guy says "white people are racist greedy new balance wearing, cargo short buying dicks"... that certainly isn't a joke - that's what needs to die. You can cross out black and white and write anything in there, and it's still all-too common. If something is meant out of hostility, belittlement or derision and not 'out of love and inclusiveness', that's where the line must be drawn. Unfortunately, that requires critical thinking and logic skills, not the current state of "zero tolerance because that's just easier than thinking" found so widely these days. If Dave Chapelle wants to make fun of me because it'll get a laugh, power to him - as long as I'm "allowed to not take it personally" and have the freedom to make a joke about him as well. His joke would almost certainly be funnier, not because his would be a "black on white" joke and mine would be the inverse, currently taboo "white on black" joke, but because he's a hilarious professional comic and I'm not.

 

In closing, understand each other, make jokes, and ultimately realize everybody is on this same rock together. I wish everyone 'got' that skin colour / location & status of reproductive bits /  shoe brand preference / traditional Friday night meal / dental visits don't inherently make any person better or worse than anybody else at anything. It just means I'm a white man who wears new balance shoes, eats Pizza Hut because there's no Dominoes, and sees a dentist twice a year.

[buddhahoodlum]

1 hour ago, JM_ said:

 

 

this is why we need to keep allowing the free discussion. Cancel culture will continue to have too much power if its not challenged and the discussions are not allowed to proceed. 

 

Sure it might be annoying a lot of the time, but people have the right to protest. 

 

Let everyone have their say, and see how many people agree or not. By letting everyone have their say, including the 'fire Dave' stuff, we'll see how many people think thats appropriate. But if we put the clamp down on the protestors, we'll never know how many people support them, or not. It'll continue to be some murky thing that some business leaders and for sure academics are afraid of. Get it all out there. 

 

 

The problem is the "fire Dave" mob are a hell of a lot louder (read: more obnoxious) then the "free Dave" crowd. I guess that's on us the moderate group, but I'm just not a stand up and shout kind of guy. Unless I'm singing along to Dio's Stand Up and Shout. 

[JM_]

1 hour ago, PhillipBlunt said:

What's reasonable? That would be having a conversation with someone before you go after their livelihood as an immediate reaction because you disagree with their opinion. 

I don't think it's an act at all. Have you watched the Closer? Chappelle is probably the greatest living comedian, and it's not just because he's uproariously funny. It's because he's as smart as he is funny. He's willing to speak about issues and topics that mainstream media seems incapable of tackling anymore, at least without a bias in place. 

 

How is The Closer causing harm? Maybe just maybe, their sensitivities are dictating their actions rather than their reason. In essence what these folks are looking to do is censorship, pure and simple. I see very little difference between what the PMRC was doing against rock and metal music in the 80's and 90's and what these people are doing now. 

Let them have at what? Someone's career? Or maybe these people could act with some tact and maturity and see if they can get a conversation going with Chappelle. 

 

Clearly no one should be allowed to limit what someone should do or say. Free speech should always be a thing, as should civil discourse. It would be nice if everyone felt that way.

Dave isn't guaranteed a career by the US constitution. If he goes to the edge, as he does, he knows he's going to get some blowback. I'm sure he knew exactly what he was doing with that part of his show.

 

Calling for someone to be fired isn't a crime, or outside of free speech. If you try to limit that, thats when cancel culture gets its real power because we won't know how many people really feel that way. 

 

Outside of the few people at Netflix and a few other vocal folks, there likely isn't much support at all for cancelling him and we all need to see the head count, otherwise the cancel culture people are given far too much weight. 

 

[JM_]

20 minutes ago, buddhahoodlum said:

The problem is the "fire Dave" mob are a hell of a lot louder (read: more obnoxious) then the "free Dave" crowd. I guess that's on us the moderate group, but I'm just not a stand up and shout kind of guy. Unless I'm singing along to Dio's Stand Up and Shout. 

Thats why we need to see how many people we're talking about. My guess is its very few. Once people see that, it won't have much power.

 

Part of the problem with social media cancelling is when it really got started, people in positions of power freaked out thinking it was a huge group speaking, when most of the time it really isn't. 

[Junkyard Dog]

1 hour ago, PhillipBlunt said:

Canada is in no way immune to this. 

I know. The implication I made is that we followed in the footsteps they imprinted. 
 

We’re pretty much the same people. 

[JM_]

Just now, Junkyard Dog said:

I know. The implication I made is that we followed in the footsteps they imprinted. 
 

We’re pretty much the same people. 

not sure I'd agree with this. Look at someone like Jordan Peterson. People are a little too educated and not nearly  as polarized in Canada for his shtick to work up here, but in the US he has a big following. 

[PhillipBlunt]

5 minutes ago, JM_ said:

Dave isn't guaranteed a career by the US constitution.

I never said he was. What I'm talking about is what's reasonable, not what's legally binding. There's a bit of a difference. 

5 minutes ago, JM_ said:

If he goes to the edge, as he does, he knows he's going to get some blowback. I'm sure he knew exactly what he was doing with that part of his show.

The edge of what exactly? Decency? Of what's socially acceptable? What was he doing exactly with that part of the show? 

5 minutes ago, JM_ said:

Calling for someone to be fired isn't a crime, or outside of free speech.

If they aren't clearly breaking the law, calling for someone's head and career because you don't agree with or like what they say, is an attempt to censor someone else's free speech. So it kind of goes against the premise of free speech in general.

5 minutes ago, JM_ said:

If you try to limit that, thats when cancel culture gets its real power because we won't know how many people really feel that way. 

There is no way to limit it. People have a right to their opinions, no matter how vindictive or based on emotions they are. So saying that limiting it gives cancel culture real power is false, as it does have power already. People have been dropped from TV, movies, musical groups for things they've said online. Some of it was clearly offensive, some was merely opinion taken way out of context. For example, Winston Marshall, the banjo player from Mumford and Sons left the band to minimize the impact that band was dealing with from a tweet he made regarding praising a journalist named Andy Ngo who wrote a book that was critical of antifa. 

5 minutes ago, JM_ said:

Outside of the few people at Netflix and a few other vocal folks, there likely isn't much support at all for cancelling him and we all need to see the head count, otherwise the cancel culture people are given far too much weight. 

They have the weight because they've seen the results of corporations and companies kowtowing to their outrage and misanthropy. 

[Junkyard Dog]

17 minutes ago, JM_ said:

not sure I'd agree with this. Look at someone like Jordan Peterson. People are a little too educated and not nearly  as polarized in Canada for his shtick to work up here, but in the US he has a big following. 

Are you sure about that?
 

These forums alone had a bunch of people defending him when he was battling addiction, including me to an extent(although I don’t agree with everything he says). Not everyone in the US likes him either, nor the UK for that matter. He has followers and people who do not agree with him everywhere. 
 

A guy even more immensely hated in Ben Shapiro even was able to speak at UBC back in 2018. 
 

We’re also poralized with what the US does.  What they do and how they are have an influence to us here in Canada. 

How much of an influence could be worthy of discussion. 

 

We are different in ways and similar in ways also. Overall though if you look at it through another lens, say being from separate country, they’ll likely see more similarities between Canada/US culturally more than most(probably any) other countries and society’s that are on our level. 

Edited October 20, 2021 by Junkyard Dog

[JM_]

1 minute ago, PhillipBlunt said:

I never said he was. What I'm talking about is what's reasonable, not what's legally binding. There's a bit of a difference. 

well, thats a huge grey area. I mean look at what some people think is reasonable around covid. People are weird. 

 

1 minute ago, PhillipBlunt said:

The edge of what exactly? Decency? Of what's socially acceptable? What was he doing exactly with that part of the show? 

Some people feel that the 'terf' thing denies who they are as people, so it upsets them. But Dave knows this and I'm sure expected or even welcomed the blowback. He's not wrong to have an opinion and I'm sure he knew this was going to generate some discussion. 

 

1 minute ago, PhillipBlunt said:

If they aren't clearly breaking the law, calling for someone's head and career because you don't agree with or like what they say, is an attempt to censor someone else's free speech. So it kind of goes against the premise of free speech in general.

have to agree to disagree here. You have the right to call for a politician e.g., to be removed, or Chip Wilson for saying something dumb, same thing with Dave. 

 

1 minute ago, PhillipBlunt said:

There is no way to limit it. People have a right to their opinions, no matter how vindictive or based on emotions they are. So saying that limiting it gives cancel culture real power is false, as it does have power already. People have been dropped from TV, movies, musical groups for things they've said online. Some of it was clearly offensive, some was merely opinion taken way out of context. For example, Winston Marshall, the banjo player from Mumford and Sons left the band to minimize the impact that band was dealing with from a tweet he made regarding praising a journalist named Andy Ngo who wrote a book that was critical of antifa. 

They have the weight because they've seen the results of corporations and companies kowtowing to their outrage and misanthropy. 

Again, you and I might just have to agree to disagree. I think up to recently cancel culture has got its power due to massive over reaction by those in power. Once people see its not a big group on most issues its power will fade.