The SNL writers who are threatening to quit the show if Dave Chappelle ends up hosting next week should ABSOLUTELY LEAVE THE SHOW. In fact, what SNL needs is a total overhaul because it hasn’t been funny for over a decade. Know what? Don’t let them quit, just FIRE them. They don’t deserve the high road in this instance. The fact that the untalented SNL creative team is willing to quit over one of the greatest comedians of our time hosting has “irony” written all over it.
The trouble brewing at 30 Rock, the home of NBC, has these writers threatening to boycot work on this week’s episode because of Chappelle hosting, according to a report by The New York Post. The writers are upset over Chappelle’s past jokes on gay and transgender people. Netflix already had to deal with the Chappelle controversy a few months ago, which itself had Netflix workers quitting in protest.
Immediately after Chappelle’s SNL appearance was announced, Celeste Yim, a writer for the show who identifies as trans and non-binary, posted on their Instagram “Transphobia is murder and should be condemned.” The post was deleted, but a screenshot is still out there.
If you remember, this past May, Chappelle was actually attacked onstage by an activist who ran up to him in the middle of a set with a knife in his hand. Chris Rock, who was in attendance, ran onto the stage and asked if the man was Will Smith.
Chappelle, seen by many as the greatest living comedian, based almost the entirety of his last Netflix special, “The Closer,” on cancel culture, tackling topics such as the LGBTQ community, white privilege, and, above all, respect for one another in a society slowly degrading into tribal hatred.
No surprise then that the media, who endlessly promote divisive content, has been shooting darts at Chappelle ever since the special started streaming on October 1st. NPR accused the special of “multi-racial whiteness” and how “Chappelle [was] using white privilege to excuse his own homophobia and transphobia.” Vulture went further, accusing Chappelle of being full of “outdated excuses masking a refusal to update a worldview,” then topping it off with the literate description of Chappelle having “his head up his ass.” Subtle.
And really, why fault Chappelle? He’s a comedian, doing what a comedian likes to do: pushing the boundaries allowed in 2021. It’s no secret that comedy and comedians have taken a severe hit these last few years, with every word and sentence by public personalities fervently pin-pointed for possible sin. The American conversation has been hijacked via, what journalist Andrew Sullivan so succinctly calls, “emotional blackmail”.