Dave Chappelle

I said this over at Facebook, but if I go to look for it later, I won’t remember that it’s there, so I’m sticking it here–I’m glad Dave Chappelle said this when he refused to perform for the rude assholes the other night:

The crowd got worse. People were booing, jeering. I heard a woman yell something that was drowned out by a guy near me screaming “DAVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEE” for the umpteenth time. But Dave hears her.

“Times like this, I wonder where Katt Williams is.” He sips his water and stares at us meaningfully. There is a hush. The jeers begin again.

When he decided he would not be doing the show, he responded to a voice in the crowd: “I’m going to have to read about this sh*t for months.”

Other places I’ve read about this don’t include this part and thus are filled with “advice” to Chappelle that he’s just got to tear into the hecklers so wickedly that they don’t dare open their mouths again and that, if he doesn’t, he’s too thin-skinned for comedy. This is, obviously, victim-blaming. That goes without saying.

But I think that the fact that Chappelle brought up Williams shows that he has, indeed, considered the “put them down until they can’t get back up” strategy–because that’s what Williams did.

It’s worth looking up what’s happened to Williams–people coming on stage to assault him, for instance and the obvious emotional problems he’s had recently–to see what’s on Chappelle’s mind as a possibility if he goes down that road.