I just watched Chappelle’s Netflix series Equanimity. Like most people I have ever met, I was a huge fan of the Chappelle show a couple decades ago, but in many ways, now I feel I’m falling away. Even from the old material. Part of the disenchantment is just me growing up, but I still love when Dave says those hard thoughts about sex, race, and politics that makes everyone think twice about why they are laughing. At the same time, he made a choice to get on the anti-Trump bandwagon in this one and mostly betrayed my hope to hear something fresh. Even though Chappelle himself cocks his head at the petty attacks of the media, he still echoes those shallow insults of Trump. We elected a president who does not know how to public speak well. Ok. Get over it. Those who speak well can also manipulate well and we have had enough of that. Maybe we are enjoying his lack of a filter simply for the humanness of it, because it reminds us all that God does not favor only the charismatically endowed. We’d rather have a coarse businessman than another charming figurehead. Why is the president supposed to be a mommy figure, comforting us and making us feel good all the time, when the job of president actually requires a hard negotiator and a market enabler? Those personality traits don’t often if ever coexist. There is actual work to be done, and we elected a working president. It seems to me that Chappelle makes the mistake of buying into the same propaganda about Trump and poor white people that only serves to further obfuscate the reality of middle America. I must grant him a more nuanced position than most of the left’s talking heads, but his politics still seem far too narrow to be worthy of a comedy special. Make Americans Think Again. Instead of giving them another celebrity to add to their list of ‘cool people’ who agree with them...
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