Dave Chapelle and the art of jokes about Jews

Dave Chapelle and the art of jokes about Jews

By John Nathan — Read time: 4 minutes

The provocative US comedian’s controversial routines can be defended — most of the time

One of the most controversial comedians in the English language, Dave Chapelle, was in London to try out new material this week. I couldn’t resist. For my money, of which £150 was spent buying a ticket (I know), he is the best but also the most interesting English speaking comedian there is.

In his Netflix specials Sticks and Stones (2019) and The Closer (2021), he fuelled already fiery debates, riling the #metoo movement by defending disgraced comedian Louis CK and goading transgender activism by declaring himself a member of “team Terf” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), the pejorative term used by trans-activists to describe women who believe that the sex a person is born with is immutable.

And then there is Chappelle’s Jewish material. His Space Jews gag riffed on the idea of Jews being alien not to the societies in which the diaspora lives but to the entire planet. Not subhuman, but definitely not human either.

Much has been written about this part of his set, including the accusation that it was antisemitic. Whether it was or wasn’t, he was clearly up for being given the label, which he adds to the tags bestowed on him by other vulnerable groups.

But there are ways to justify this material. The comedian maintains just enough ambiguity for it to be possible that Chapelle is parodying the bigots who believe such rubbish.

True, you need to really want to deploy this defence. I do, because he treads impossibly thin lines. Thrillingly eloquent, he is a direct descendent of the original pusher of hot button issues, Lenny Bruce, the Jewish disrupter of the 1960s. Bruce was able to opine about race and racism in one moment while in the next defending the reputation of the common fly by asking if anyone has actually caught a disease from one. It’s so unfair they get a bad press, was Bruce’s point. “My cousin gave three guys the clap and nobody ever hit her with a rolled up newspaper.”

I also give Chappelle the benefit of the doubt because as America votes in the mid-terms, he’s an asset to anyone opposed to Trumpism. I still hold to the possibly romantic view that American Jews and African-Americans are politically bound by a common interest.

Now, Chappelle’s new material was more Jewish than ever. I don’t want to spoil what is a work in progress, but the “in” to his theme is (inevitably) his friend Kanye West, whose most famous tweets announced that when it comes to Jews, the rapper, producer and influencer with nearly 32 million followers is going “to defcon 3”, a Pentagon term stating America’s readiness for nuclear war.

Also up for Chappelle’s consideration are the alleged antisemitic tweets by American basketball player Kyrie Irving, though for Chappelle, Irving is just too dumb to spend much time on them. But Kanye is different and Chappelle is both hilariously incredulous and a little understanding. Again with that invisibly thin line. Still, to Kanye his message is clear: the Jew stuff has got to stop. “Someone is going to get hurt”, a warning that out of 32 million followers, one crazy bastard might find himself a Jew to hurt.

But — and there has to be a but — elegantly woven around all this is an observation that bears little rational scrutiny. It is that when it comes to Jews, the price for causing offence is especially high. By the audience reaction, this view seems to be gaining some purchase in the arena of comedy. Earlier, Chappelle’s warm-up guy and DJ, Cipha Sounds, jokingly (I think) asked whether there were any “Jewish media” in the audience, by which I assume he meant social media, not the JC.

Chapelle, though, is not talking about the kind of consequences borne by Salman Rushdie, who paid with his eye, but a monetary price which Chappelle implies is higher than is the case when offending any other group.

Now, the idea that Adidas (a company whose founder has a Nazi past, as Chapelle points out) would be less willing to drop a white entertainer spouting anti-black bile than they were Kanye for his antisemitism is, at best, not proven.

But what is dangerous for Chappelle is not the accusation of antisemitism, but that unlike his best comedy, his point about Jews is so argumentatively weak.

Nor does it tread that line.

So Dave: I know your show is a work in progress. But take a Jewish fan’s advice and be offensive, but stay rational. Without that, there’s nothing to laugh at.

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