This past weekend, superstar comic Dave Chappelle hosted Saturday Night Live, which he opened with a monologue that is now being pilloried as antisemitic. Remarking on the controversy surrounding Kanye West’s and Kyrie Irving’s hateful commentary about Jewish people, Chappelle said he could see “if you had some kind of issue, you might go out to Hollywood and start connecting some kind of lines, and you could maybe adopt the illusion that Jews run show business. It’s not a crazy thing to think, but it’s a crazy thing to say out loud.”
Groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) were quick to anathematize Chappelle’s statements. “We shouldn’t expect Dave Chappelle to serve as society’s moral compass, but disturbing to see Saturday Night Live not just normalize but popularize antisemitism,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “Why are Jewish sensitivities denied or diminished at almost every turn? Why does our trauma trigger applause?” American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten concurred, tweeting, “Exactly right Jonathan. It was chilling to watch. No trauma should be laughed at- or made fun of- none.”
Are you kidding me? So everything that insinuates anything about a social-identity group is out of bounds? Chappelle’s comments were undoubtedly distasteful and crude, but that’s what comedy is supposed to be. The difference between Kanye’s malicious invective and Chappelle’s standup routine — is that it was a standup routine! If you can’t lampoon stereotypes, comedy is dead.
Conservatives who extolled Chappelle for his bravery in the face of cancellation when refusing to apologize for poking fun at the absurdity of biological men playing women’s sports ought to be consistent in their evaluation of the GOAT. Free speech isn’t carte blanche to say anything. But if satire is to survive in this woke new world, it must be permitted to be irreverent and acerbic.