Back in May, Dave Chappelle legged it off to Africa without making all of the third series of Chappelle’s Show for Comedy Central like he said he would. But now Dave Chappelle is back.
Well, he’s kind of back at least. Comedy Central has announced that it is to cobble together a load of the stuff that Dave Chappelle filmed for Chappelle’s Show before he buggered off and show that instead.
In August 2004, Dave Chappelle (DVDs) signed a $50 million contract with
Comedy Central to make two more seasons of the incredibly successful Chappelle’s Show – a
contract that presumably ended when Dave went AWOL in May, leaving the
production is suspended chaos. He eventually turned up at a ‘spiritual
retreat’ in South Africa, killing arguments that he was a mental old crackhead:
"I’m an introspective dude. I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes. And I’ve been doing a lot of thinking here. There were things that overwhelmed
me. But not in the way that people are saying. I haven’t spent any of
the money. All that stuff about partying and taking crack is not true.
But
whatever Dave Chappelle is up to, Comedy Central plans to go ahead and
show the never-before-seen material that Chappelle made before he ran
away. President of Comedy Central, Doug Herzog, said:
"We have to do this because we have no idea what the future foretells. He hasn’t been able to articulate what he would like to
do, so we’re moving forward."
The
new Chappelle material only stretches to two hours, and will be chopped
into four half-hour shows when it airs in the second quarter of 2006. One of the new sketches is said to be a spoof of MTV show Cribs, and
shows Chappelle sprinkling diamond dust on a Tyrannosaurus Rex egg that
he’s cooking.
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Chris Laurel says
I was always against Slavery Reparations. The mere execution of paying them out boggles contemplation. Do I think African-Americans as a class deserve them, though? Yes. Without doubt. We have continually beat that community down. They know we know this. We laugh at Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle because we know they are right. “It’s funny, because it’s true.” But once we turn off the TV or leave the theater, we go back to the status quo, the Prozac, the lifetime of unending therapy sessions we need to help us deal with the fact our society is rotting from the inside out. It’s not just our leaders; it’s the people who elect them.
It’s not just our leaders who barely debate the merits of destroying and rebuilding an entire country, but almost immediately debate the merits of rebuilding one of our own [black] cities? One of the most unique and culturally relevant places we have in this country? It shocks me. I question if this is the kind of society that listens to our forefathers anymore, or if we just listen to their words spun into lies. What has become of us? Do people ask themselves questions like this anymore? $1 billion dollars a day, and most of those fighting and dying are minorities, too. Go figure the white guys running the war never served themselves yet can question everyone else’s patriotism. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. And we impeached Clinton over personal indiscretions, ones many of us in our own society are guilty? Remember the conservatives decrying “Travelgate?” That was cronyism and a scandal, and now look at those same individuals. Go figure – Republicans have the same human failings as Democrats. The difference is in the hypocrites who brandish their morality like a weapon at anyone who disagrees with them, or points out their unprincipled actions. It wouldn’t frustrate so much if it didn’t work. But the American public, in its decay, has suckled up to the hypocrites’ teat, hearing what they want to hear, never caring the words rarely translate into principled action.
“Oh, but that’s because Things Are Different.” No they’re not. They never are. I only see history repeating itself.
And we do nothing. We have turned our backs on blacks’ problems and we have never kept our word to them. When we finally, reluctantly, started to accept them we said, “Go out there, be equal and good luck.” Although we do not want to give them affirmative action or special consideration, or anything more than what everyone else gets in our Darwinian society. Then we wonder why one of their deepest poets was a drug dealer and gangster.
It’s because they remember slavery. They remember hundreds of their children and men beaten or hung in the streets of New York City as the Civil War broke out, blamed for wanting their freedom. Isn’t that heartbreaking? Even in this city. They remember “40 acres and a mule” which, had we fulfilled that promise, maybe their community would not be in the dire straits it finds itself in today. Instead we freed them, gave them Black Codes, Jim Crow, segregation and ghettoization. Holy Robert Moses! Because of one lousy Supreme Court interpretation, the Bill of Rights was not applied to blacks nationally until the middle of the 20th Century. Barron v. Baltimore. And now the kinds of guys who voted against applying the Bill of Rights nationally will be handing down decisions on our Supreme Court. And I’m not supposed to be frightened? I’m not supposed to yell out about this stuff in class when I hear it?!? Bullshit! A breach of decorum in defense of liberty is no vice, my friends. It’s not even a partisan issue. We need to start looking and reading the roots of our country’s founding, because it is obvious to me we’ve forgotten them.