The Great Comedian of All Time

In his special “What’s in a Name” Dave Chappelle in a very revealing moment declares himself the “G.O.A.T”, an acronym for “the greatest of all time.” That’s right. Dave Chappelle claimed that he was the greatest comedian of all time. And he wasn’t trying to be funny either.

The greatest of all time? The best comedian in the history of comedy?  I  think Dave Chappelle is a funny guy and that The Chappelle Show was a ground-breaking sketch show that holds up well even today. His early comedy specials were hilarious and he’s been a stellar guest on late night TV.

But that doesn’t make him the greatest comedian of all time. What’s most remarkable to me is how Dave Chappelle has changed over the years. He started off as a skinny gawky kid who was funny just to look at. But now he’s buffed himself up, travels around with an entourage, and has the sort of big head that goes with taking steroids. I’m sure he wears sunglasses all the time and not so he won’t be recognized but to make it obvious that he’s famous. Even his voice has changed. He used to talk in a high-pitched cartoonish voice but now the tone is lower and the delivery slower as though he’s striving for more gravitas in keeping with his image of himself as the most brilliant comedian who ever lived.

It’s obvious that he takes himself much too seriously. Let’s make one thing clear: Comedians are not artists. Comedy is very popular these days and as a result many comedians have gotten swelled-heads because they mistakenly think that this is because of their own brilliance rather the particular social and cultural conditions of the age we live in. Comedy is a cyclical phenomenon that goes in and out of fashion and now it’s at the height of its popularity.

However, comedians are by definition low-brow entertainers, modern day court jesters. They are not artists producing timeless works of art. They are more akin to chefs, who create a product that people enjoy but has no larger impact on civilization. These days chefs are just as overvalued as comedians. This is because of the rise of a new aristocratic class of rich buffoons spawned by the pseudo-capitalism practiced since the Reagan era. Spending lavish amounts of money on a meal is a status symbol that makes the rich feel good about themselves. The result is that chefs who create strange looking concoctions that most ordinary people have no interest in eating have been put on a pedestal. It’s a lot like the Emperor’s new clothes.

Art has meaning that transcends its time and place. Even the cave paintings of prehistoric man that date back tens of thousands of years resonate with us today because no matter how primitive these people might have been, we are linked by the aspiration to put our imprint on eternity and seek out what is timeless in human experience.

Comedy, however, manifests nothing larger than itself. When we see a comedy performance, we forget about it soon afterwards. Nobody goes around talking about the deeper meaning of a stand-up comedy performance. It doesn’t affect your life or your view of the world. You don’t watch a stand-up special multiple times in order to capture its nuances and dredge it for deeper meaning.

That’s because stand-up comedy is by its nature superficial and forgettable. And I like comedy. I used to listen to the comedy records of Bill Cosby when I was growing up. I thought they were really funny. But then much later, when I saw some of his stand-up performances on YouTube, I was perplexed because he wasn’t funny at all anymore. Had he changed? Had I changed? He was still popular, at least until it was discovered that he had been drugging and raping women, but I had no interest in his comedy anymore.

Or take Rodney Dangerfield. I love watching him on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. That’s when he was at his best. But when you try to sit through an entire stand-up performance, you realize then how thin the material is. It’s not really his fault, however. Stand-up comedy is meant to be experienced in small doses. There are very few comedians who have strong enough material for a one-hour show. And anyway an hour of comedy is usually exhausting.

So when a comedian says he’s an artist, I have to laugh. It just goes to show how most comedians have huge egos, which stems from insecurity. Most comedians were persecuted when they were growing up because they were weird or socially inept or looked funny. After all, the last career most intelligent, self-confident human beings would want is one in which your job is to make other people laugh at you. But comedians were laughed when they were young, so it’s only natural that at some point they would try to make a living at it.

In the case of the artist Dave Chappelle, he defends himself from the “woke” mob that criticized him for his transgender jokes with an appeal to free speech. As an artist, not just a low-brow entertainer, he can’t compromise his art. He is a modern-day Thomas Paine who will not bow down to persecution. “Give me liberty or give me death!” he proclaims. Well, not death maybe. But give him liberty or fuck off. That’s the modern version of Thomas Paine.

I’m all for free speech and I don’t particularly care about transgender jokes or the transgender movement, although I do think that if the same type of jokes were made about a racial group, the problematic nature would be obvious. But the topic of transgender human beings is one that is still confusing for most people who can’t understand how somebody could come up with the idea that they’re the wrong sex. If you have a penis you’re a man, if you have a vagina you’re a woman. It seems simple. Maybe you don’t like being a man or a woman but why would you think that changing your sex is going to solve your problems.

It’s hard to wrap your head around this idea. So because of this confusion, as well as the fear that most people instinctively have for people or behavior that is different from what they are used to, it is easy to make jokes about transgender people. Added to that, Dave Chappelle has a fondness for cheap, low brow humor. So why should transgenders be spared?

But he’s not a freedom fighter. He isn’t a person being persecuted for his art. In fact, he’s phenomenally rich and famous. He sells out all of his stand-up performances despite the ridiculous ticket prices. What really rankles him is that somebody might try to control what he says. Not because he has anything especially meaningful to say but because he’s Dave Chappelle. He’s the greatest comedians of all time. How dare anybody try to stop him from speaking his mind.

Unfortunately, there is a big divide between the baby boomer generation of comedians and the younger generation, especially Generation Z. The baby boomers grew up in an environment when the media was still tightly controlled and so you had to be careful about the way you expressed yourself. Comedians – Lenny Bruce immediately comes to mind – could be arrested even for saying things that were considered obscene.

So the baby boomers developed the attitude that it was their duty to be transgressive. They broke barriers, they poked fun at sacred cows, they used profanity, often they tried to shock. It began with the comedy of George Carlin and Richard Pryor. Carlin became more of a social critic and Pryor created the genre of personal comedy, using his own life experiences for his material. Eventually, laws regulating public speech were for the most part repealed and the comedians took full advantage of that to take their comedy into places that were previously unmentionable.

The problem is that the concept of free speech became distorted until profanity, hate speech, ridicule, insults, all became a normal part of comedy. Most comedians today can’t function without saying “fuck” and “motherfucker” and “shit” and “balls” and “pussy” and talking about their penises, their vaginas, their anuses, and their sexual perversions. Races were made fun of, ethnic groups, disabilities, sexual deviants, of course, all in the name of the free expression of comedy.

But the younger generation apparently has become tired of that kind of comedy. They want a kinder, gentler, more inclusive brand of comedy that doesn’t depend on shock value or making fun of people. This outrages the baby boomers. To them, the effort by pressure groups to control what they say is a violation of their sacred first amendment right to free speech. In short, it is tyranny, the beginnings of a fascist dictatorship.

I understand that point of view. I’m also a baby boomer. We remember back in the days of the 1960’s, when free speech was curtailed, when the races were still segregated, when saying the wrong thing at the wrong time could literally threaten your career and even your life. Back then, everything had to be sanitized to appeal to a bland white-bread middle class.

But it’s not like that anymore. Dave Chappelle isn’t a freedom fighter. He isn’t trying to correct the injustices of society. He’s just a guy who tells jokes. And he was a lot funnier when he wasn’t rich, which is true of every successful comedian. Once a comic become rich, he invariably loses touch with his audience and basically ends up becoming boring.

My favorite example is a bit done by Kevin Hart. He recounts going to a party at Jerry Seinfeld’s house. Seinfeld had just bought a wood-burning pizza oven and had organized the party to show it off. The special of the night was a pizza with a five-cheese topping. Hart then recounts how he buys a similar oven and throws a party for his black friends with a five-cheese pizza. And of course it ends in disaster. It’s a funny story because he’s making fun of himself and his nouveau rich lifestyle but there's nothing particularly meaningful there.

When these comedians were coming up, they had to be in tune with their audience. They were poor, they were struggling, and it was their ability to turn their struggles into humor that won them an audience. But now they’re conceited and narcissistic and out of touch. At one of his comedy shows in San Francisco, Dave Chappelle even brought Elon Musk on stage, introducing him enthusiastically as “the richest man in the world.” Honestly, is this what Dave Chappelle thinks his audience wants? To see him hob-knobbing with billionaires? The young Dave Chappelle would have been the first to satirize Musk, not defend him in front of a hostile audience.

But he’d rather make fun of transgender people, which is fine, I guess, but it doesn’t make you the greatest comedian of all time. Make fun of Bill Gates, make fun of politicians, make fun of rich out of touch comedians. Do something to show anyway to show us that you’re not just some rich guy pretending to be an artist.