Micheal Jackson. Woody Allen. Bill Cosby. Kevin Spacey. These are some of the celebrities that the world has turned on recently when they were reasonably accused of criminal sexual behavior (only Cosby was actually convicted, and even that was overturned). I myself will admit that I once was an admirer of all them, but I still have moved away from supporting them to different degrees (I still have Thriller on my itunes, and sometimes watch Woody Allen movies). It's always hard to separate art and artist, especially since so many great artists over the years have done terrible things (Miles Davis, Lou Reed, James Brown and John Lennon all used to make great music, and they all physically abused their wives and girlfriends). The decision to admire the work of any artist always raises many questions, like is there a waiting period after their death that makes it alright to admire them? I noticed that the recent Sight and Sound magazine list of the 100 best films ever made included no films by Allen or Roman Polanski, but did have two by Charlie Chaplin, who once impregnated a 15 year old girl when he was 32. Obviously, these things are complicated with no easy answer.
Which brings us to a recent concert I attended with Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. Like many other people, I've been a fan of Chappelle ever since his sketch show blew up about 20 years ago, and I've always enjoyed his stand up specials in which his incisive bits about race combined with his likable persona and gift for imitations were great. That is, I did admire him until his recent Netflix special in which he declared himself a "Trans-exclusionary radical feminist" or "Terf" and railed against the rights (and really, the existence) of trans people. It was a mean spirited bit that played into the recent conservative demonization of trans people that has lead to hatred and even violence against them all around the country. Chappelle has described himself as a Democrat, but here he was playing right into the Republican playbook of division and hatred against a small group of Americans who just want to lead their best lives.
So when a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go see Chappelle performing with Chris Rock here in San Francisco, I reluctantly agreed I'm also a fan of Rock and I knew that he would be going first and I could always leave early if Chappelle started bashing trans people. Thankfully, except for one brief reference, Chappelle didn't touch the issue, mostly sticking to crude sex jokes that didn't much for me (an entire bit built around the infamous Chuck Berry sex tape was not one I needed to hear). Still, his set wasn't bad, even though I think Rock was better.
As the show wrapped up, it looked like controversy had been avoided. But then Chappelle impulsively invited Elon Musk to come up and share the stage without considering how Musk's recent chaotic takeover of Twitter had made him unpopular in San Francisco. It was an awkward moment in that Musk clearly didn't know what to do on stage, made even more awkward when many people in the audience started to boo him loudly. At first Chapelle made a pretty good joke about how some of the people in the audience were the ones that Musk had fired from Twitter. But then he later added that all the booing seemed to be coming from the cheap seats in the back row, which didn't exactly help the situation. (When Chapelle, who's paid tens of millions of dollars for his comedy specials, introduces one of the richest men in the world to the stage and then ridicules the poorer members of the audience for booing him, he inadvertently laid bare the unfair class issues in this country). At that point, Musk tried to say something, but then a serious fight broke out in the crowd (between a Musk supporter and a Musk hater? Who knows). Chapelle then tried to calm things by saying how much he wished well for the whole audience, and then quite lamely got Musk to shout out one of Chapelle's old catch phrases from his show ("I'm rich, bitch!") before drawing this odd spectacle to a close.
At first, I mostly shrugged off this show's crazy conclusion as just a strange way for things to end. But then I wondered about why Chapelle thought that bringing Musk out on the stage was a good idea. Did he really think that the crowd would cheer for Musk just because he's rich? Has he no idea how terrible Musk's takeover of Twitter has been, with a resurgence of hate speech on the social media site? When I combine his comments about trans people with his open ridiculing of the poor at this show, I've decided that I can't support his career anymore. I hope that other fans of his will join me.
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