I would buy all that as an account of Dave’s descent into paranoia. The incident with somebody pressing down on his chest is a pretty classic sleep apnea dream. Sleep apnea is thought to explain a lot of legends like nightmares (horses standing on your chest) or succubi. When you are in a dream state and stop breathing your mind tends to make up stories to explain the experience.
Probably it’s absurd to an extent that even arguing about it amounts to making a muggins of myself, but what strikes me as odd about the theory is that I just don’t see Dave Chapelle’s material as harmful to the black community. If it were, then the guy running BET is also doing blacks a disservice. I used to watch a standup show on that network which was pretty funny, but the jokes were all about stereotypes of blacks – insinuating that blacks were stingy, they beat their children, they were pre-occupied with oral sex, ect. In fact, if this secret cabal is so concerned about this type of humor, I would expect to hear that Aaron MacGruder has been getting voodoo dolls delivered to him. His show Boondocks, which is hillarious, also deals rather bluntly with racial issues – far more bluntly than the comic strip did.
What I want to know is the story from his longtime writer and friend. Thsi wasn’t really just Dave’s show: it was a collaboration between him and the guy who does the commentary tracks with him on the DVDs. What’s his story? Did he and Dave break up their working relationship over this? I would think that him bailing on the show would involve him bailing on his partner as well, wouldn’t it?
My understanding was that Chappelle skipped town to do some soul-searching. From this article . “Some inside Comedy Central have said the stand-up comic realized that white audiences may have been laughing a little too hard, a little too unironically at Chappelle’s skewering of black caricatures and characters. Race as the joke became unfunny when Chappelle didn’t think his mostly white audience understood the pain underneath. It’s a theory, of course, but one some close to Chappelle say is pretty accurate.”
I recall reading something similar in another article that quoted Chappelle himself, but I cannot find that one at the moment. He stated that at a rehearsal for one of the shows, a white guy had behaved as described above,“laughing a little too hard”, causing Chappelle to question the direction his humor was going, and if he could control it.
If I may paraphase from the second episode of the Boondocks: there’s something we all know: [Black people] are crazy… But now I think White people are starting to catch on. Basically “we” can laugh at ourselves, but “they” can’t. See Agnostic Pagan’s post. Now I can’t say anymore lest I wake up with Oprah Wifney on my chest.
Reads a bit like “The Protocols of the Elders of Africa”. :rolleyes: One wonders how Eddie Murphy got away with Mr. Robinson’s neighborhood, given that sort of pressure…
-Snerk- He spells Insure, Ensure. Not for nothing, but if powerful African-Americans were going to hunt down Dave and force-feed him adult nutrion supplement fluids, he may well have taken the best road by fleeing to South Africa.
I’m embarassed I watch it with the sound off, hoping for a wardrobe malfunction.
I *keed. *
It’s not really fair of me to lump it in with the rest of the comedies I mentioned-- the writing is better than “Moesha” – but I’ve never watched the show to appeal to my sense of humor. Golden Brooks is just too damn cute. I’m all like, “DUMP DARNELL!”
The conspiracy web page might just be a case of viral marketing. The following quote is taken from Chappelle’s bio at IMDB (http://imdb.com/name/nm0152638/bio):
Yeah, a friend of mine had that same reaction upon first seeing it, and you’re both probably right. I don’t tend to think in those terms. I tend to think in terms of old fashioned nuttiness or parody. But probably the viral marketing theory will pan out in the end.
I find I can’t rustle up an incredible amount of sympathy for DC. As smart and wickedly dead-on as a lot of the stuff was/is on that show, you can’t say it isn’t pretty damn lowbrow. Like, sub-South Park lowbrow. So of course it was going to appeal to both (a) moderately intelligent, semi-cultured folks like myself who enjoy some seriously base humor now and then, and (b) morons of the Howard Stern-worshipping variety who wouldn’t know what social satire was if they fell over it. (They just love when the homeless guy pees in the lady lawyer’s face from the witness stand of a courtroom.) Now his ivory tower is shaken by the fact that some of these types are -surprise surprise- actually throwing it back to him on the street, in front of his kids? If I were his therapist, think I’d prescribe him two tablets of Suck-it-the-Hell-Up-Tyrone every two hours.
Thank you!!! I was wondering about that website. This is the company that registered the site. I thought their clientele was a little high end for a ‘conspiracy’ nut. Viral marketing explains it rather well.
Yeah, the hell with his personal life.
What I was actually saying is that he was unprepared and overwhelmed by the response his show got, of which the quoting was one visible part. Not that the irritation made him crazy.
