Well, he got one word right

I fell for it. Again. My sister told me she watched Dave Chapelle’s “Unstoppable” show and that I should watch it too.

So I did.

I’m not a fan. I find Dave Chapelle to be boring at his best. Everyone says Killing them softly was amazing – I was yawning. I watched some amazing standup shows and they all had one thing in common: Dave Chapelle wasn’t there.

Jimmy Carr, Bill Burr (before getting married), George Carlin, even Adam Ferrara (before 9/11) – those are/were funny people.

As far as I’m concerned, Dave Chapelle has always been boring at best. Watching his show expecting a laugh is like watching a recession expecting to get a raise. It might happen, it’s just not very likely.

…because for most of his show, he kept talking about people I knew (almost) nothing about. Take Puff Daddy. I heard about him. Here’s what I know about that man:

• I’ll be missing you
• Come with me
• Fucked Jennifer Lopez
• Is either on trial or in jail for sex trafficking or something like that

It’s not that I’ve been living under a rock. I haven’t. But I grew up in a different place, where that kind of music didn’t have a lot of fans – and those few fans would be bullied to no end (at best). This had nothing to do with race, it had more to do with that type of music. Rap, hip-hop, that kind of stuff – they were considered annoying at best. Back then, back there, most people learned English by watching American films (and since that TV station had a hilarious budget, they would at best be 70s films – broadcast in the late 90s). As such, the few people who actually understood English had no knowledge of the “hood” slang. Nobody knew what the fuck 2pac or “biggie” were trying to say. Our best guess was that they too were struggling with English.

But this is a central part of Dave Chapelle’s show. There’s this long – convoluted even – story about people I’m assuming are supposed to be famous in the US, most of which (I assume) are/were black. I have no clue of who those people were. Muzzle, Nozzle, some dude like that, who supposedly died of AIDS.

What Dave Chapelle did was this: he listed a number of these people who were supposed to be influential. So influential, in fact, that the FBI was supposedly monitoring them. Needless to say, I’ve not heard of any of them until now. He figured that out because another (nameless) guy once told him in a club that “the FBI lights are on”. Somehow, they figured out that lighting was different one night and they just KNEW that that meant the “feds” were watching them. Whoa there, Einstein! That really struck a chord for me; it reminded me of when we were little and the whole neighbourhood (everyone under 5, to be precise) got together and figured out the identity of Santa Claus: it was that dude over there because he worked as a truck driver and you’d OBVIOUSLY need a truck to deliver all those presents to so many children. If that’s not black intelligence right there, I don’t know what to tell you. IT WAS THE LIGHTING, BROTHER. IT WAS DIFFERENT. GET IT? DIFFERENT. FEDS.

The first guy is Jack Johnson – a heavyweight champion. I admit I had never heard of him. No one I know ever mentioned that name. I have heard of great boxers – some real (Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Rocky Marciano, Mike Tyson), some imaginary (Rocky), but that name never came up. I’m guessing he is to box what Amelia Earhart was to aviation.

But I was curious, so I read about him. According to Dave Chapelle, the man was into fighting (and beating) white boxers and into fucking white women. Understandable, I guess – at least when it comes to the latter.

Reading about him left me even more confused.

While in Philadelphia in 1903, Johnson met Clara Kerr, a black prostitute. According to Johnson’s autobiography, Kerr left him for Johnson’s friend, a racehorse trainer named William Bryant. They stole Johnson’s jewelry and clothing when they left. Johnson tracked the couple down and had Kerr arrested on burglary charges. Johnson and Kerr reconciled for a while before she left him again.

During a three-month tour of Australia in 1907, Johnson had a brief affair with Alma “Lola” Toy, a white woman from Sydney. Johnson confirmed to an American journalist that he intended to marry Toy. When The Referee printed Johnson’s plans to marry Toy, it caused controversy in Sydney. Toy demanded a retraction and later won a libel lawsuit from the newspaper.

Johnson met Etta Terry Duryea, a Brooklyn socialite and former wife of Clarence Duryea, at a car race in 1909. In 1910, Johnson hired a private investigator to follow Duryea after suspecting she was having an affair with his chauffeur. On Christmas Day, Johnson confronted Duryea and beat her to the point of hospitalization. They reconciled and were married on January 18, 1911. Prone to depression, her condition worsened due to Johnson’s abuse and infidelity in addition to the hostile reaction to their interracial relationship. Duryea attempted suicide twice before she died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on September 11, 1912

In the summer of 1912, Johnson met Lucille Cameron, an 18-year-old prostitute from Minneapolis who relocated to Chicago, at his nightclub Café de Champion. Johnson hired her as his stenographer, but shortly after Duryea’s funeral, they were out in public as a couple. They married on December 3, 1912, at 3:00 p.m. Cameron filed for divorce in 1924 due to his infidelity.

So there I was, going “right..black prostitute…lying about having an affair with a white woman…married another white woman and got her to kill herself once she realized what she got into…then another prostitute (the race wasn’t specified)….what the fuck is this? Does this count as success? Is that the black role model Dave Chapelle is touting?

But here’s the thing. According to Chapelle, the Mann Act was created specifically to take Jack Johnson down. Holy shit?

Although the law was created to stop forced sexual slavery of women, the most common initial use of the Mann Act was to prosecute men for having sex with underage females.

…which is another way of saying “my hero was a pedo and a pimp”. A number of other famous people have been prosecuted under the Mann Act (a list can be found here and some of the people in there are definitely more famous than Jack Johnson; Charlie Chaplin and Charles Manson are two such examples; more recent examples include R Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell and, of course, Sean Combs aka Puff Daddy).

…and that, right there, is what Dave Chapelle’s getting at. In his mind, that act was created to take down Jack Johnson. Holy shit reloaded. The fact that Puff Daddy was also convicted is to Dave Chapelle undeniable proof that when a black man becomes too successful or too influential, “they” (the feds, of course, which serve you-know-who, according to Chapelle; yeah, I know you don’t-know-who; neither do I; neither does Chapelle, which makes it even funnier) will take that black man down. As proof, here’s Jack Johnson. No, never mind what the dude did – with prostitutes or other women. CLEARLY the system couldn’t stand to see a successful black man. Since Puff Daddy and R Kelly were also prosecuted under the Mann Act, CLEARLY they got too powerful and too influential, so there you have it, the system took them down. Never mind them raping women (in some cases, girls – as in, underage) – who fucking cares about that? It’s the white system, bro, taking down honest black rapists. CAN’T YOU SEE IT? …neither can I.

In fact, that’s what Dave Chapelle appears to be afraid of. He feels that he’s grown too powerful. Too influential. Too rich. So he’s afraid that he too will be taken down. I don’t know about that. Have you been raping any underage girls? If so, you could be right!

The rest of his show is even dumber. There’s this story about this Dr Sebi or something, some black guy who supposedly cured AIDS and stuff. The system worked on taking him down as well, because he was too successful. Wikipedia, of course, has a different story.

Although he used the title and name Dr. Sebi, Bowman had not completed any formal medical training. He was considered a quack by licensed doctors, attorneys, and consumer protection agencies in the United States

He was arrested and accused by New York state of practicing medicine without a license. After trial, Bowman was acquitted based on the legal definition of “medicine” for his herbs. He was later charged in a civil suit that resulted in him being prohibited from making therapeutic claims for his supplements.

In May 2016, Bowman was arrested in Honduras for money laundering, after being found carrying tens of thousands of dollars in cash with insufficient accounting for its origin. During several weeks’ detention in jail, he contracted pneumonia. He died in police custody as he was being transported to a hospital.

Gee, guess the holy herbs he required just didn’t grow in this cell. Who the fuck knows.

But the system didn’t stop there. It also took down the nozzle or muzzle guy, whoever the fuck that was – according to Chapelle, someone who got shot by an old gang member. It was the system though, Chapelle’s sure of it.

The rest of the show is even stranger. At some point there’s a joke about Chapelle using a falcon to kill a transgender person in Saudi Arabia. I’m not American, so I didn’t find that particularly funny. I’m not a “woke” person either, but I fail to see how that’s supposed to be a funny story or a joke. Whatever.

As far as I can tell, nobody in the public wanted to know why Chapelle had “played” in Saudi Arabia, but that’s how he started the show: by claiming that it’s ok to have a show there, because while Saudi Arabia killed one journalist, Israel had killed 240. Or 420. I can’t remember. I don’t know, but it certainly sounds like half the people in Gaza are journalists.

All in all, I didn’t quite get it. It’s 10% “Israel is bad, Saudi Arabia is good”, 10% “I killed a transgender person using a falcon in Saudi Arabia”, 78% “the system is taking down successful and influential black men who dindonuffin – other than raping minors from time to time” and 2% “I’m so rich I bought the entire town I live in”. Yeah, it definitely sounds like the system is getting to him.

“Unstoppable” is what Dave Chapelle thinks he is. I pity the people who bought a ticket. The man wasn’t even trying to be funny. When he wasn’t busy justifying the Saudi Arabia gig, he was either boasting about how rich he was or spreading a bunch of bullshit about “them” taking down Jack Johnson, Puff Daddy etc. Yeah, I can imagine whoever was President of the USA back then trembling in fear whenever Puff Daddy was mentioned. This hugely influential – towering, even – figure who was a threat to the system. Because, erm…he…something…something…Godzilla soundtrack, I don’t know.

Now, I said he got one thing right. One word was right.

However, that word isn’t “unstoppable”.

Boo fucking hoo. Every time an innocent black person gets rich and starts trafficking and/or raping minors, the system takes them down. Uh…okay?