Mort Sahl Begat Dave Chappelle

[MortSahlFan]

(from the Chicago Tribune )

Mort Sahl Begat Dave Chappelle



Will Leonard, an illustrious Tribune nightlife critic, hated Mort Sahl when he performed at Chicago's famed Mister Kelly's nightclub in 1973. "Mort Sahl almost always is a surprise. Not always a pleasant surprise," the late Leonard wrote. "The man operates in an area all his own, zooming around just a little over your head, needling you with caustic remarks that make you nervous not only about your friends and enemies but about yourself as well."

Leonard went on to call Sahl "sardonic and sarcastic and destructive," as was Leonard's right as a critic. He did not say that Sahl should be banned henceforth from the stage of Mister Kelly's.

Leonard knew the importance of satiric speech in a free society. He wrote for a newspaper that long had celebrated Sahl's right to offend everybody in the joint.

Sahl died Oct. 26 after a highly influential life.

Smart satirists, and Sahl was the model for many of them, understand that they operate as safety valves, stabbing at the bulbous balloons of the powerful and thus doing their part for democracy. Their job is to remind us that the world is complex, that absolute power corrupts absolutely and that everyone should be at least a little bit nervous about themselves.

It takes enormous courage to protect the rights of the Sahls of the world when you, your identity or what you believe, are the target. But it's vital. History teaches us that the chilling of free speech is merely a way station on the road to the collapse of ever-fragile democracy. And satirical speech is often the first kind to be repressed.

We wish that the many critics of Dave Chappelle at Netflix had taken Leonard's tack instead of trying to get the streaming platform to cancel his hugely popular show or remove it from Netflix's offerings. The Chappelle comedy special that has caused so much uproar, "The Closer," is often funny, but incendiary comments like "gender is a fact" also might bring about a response not unlike the one Leonard had for Sahl. And the expression of outrage is every viewer's right.

Netflix is a commercial operation with shareholders but also, increasingly, an American town square. Its offerings should reflect multiple points of view, including contemporary manifestations of the Sahl brand of comedy, and its co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, is right to defend Chappelle's right to ridicule. Sarandos did not "screw up" in Chappelle's defense, as he later said to calm the firestorm. But we suspect he knows that.

In every American generation, it seems, at least one faction of the country struggles to understand that the target of the satirist is the powerful and that the powerful never actually think they have power, they merely exert their influence. And the moral rectitude of their religion or identity or ideology does not, and must not, deter the satirist. Sure it's hard to swallow and the off switch is always available, but the price otherwise paid by a free society is far too great.

One of the arguments made against Chappelle is that his words might incite some to violence and/or make some Americans feel unsafe. This is the nub of the endlessly circuitous array of arguments over the controversial special: One person's freedom of speech is someone else's hate speech.

We recognize that hate speech both exists and has done damage and that there are limits to what a person should be allowed to say in the public square. And we know that there never will be a neutral arbiter on these matters.

But reasonable Americans must understand why there has to be a very high bar for banning (or de-platforming) speech and that the persons being attacked by the satirists are the least qualified to make that judgment. Comedians are not the same as politicians inciting their followers; they play a different role in society and most people can see what they say in that light. It's wrong to blur the two, which is what has been happening in the Chappelle debate.

Banning satire rarely works; the banned and thus hardened speaker merely works to find or build another channel. It stifles relative thinking. It undermines tolerance and softens barriers against dangerously oppressive regimes. And it impedes the responsibility we all should feel to one another to check ourselves and to get out of the bubble of the like-minded. And, as counter-intuitive as this many seem to those who have been understandably wounded by Chappelle's barbs, it hurts a nation's awareness of complexity and its progression toward desirable change.

That is what Leonard meant when he wrote of his own discomfort at Sahl's act. Or, to put it in Sahl's own words: "If you were the only person left on the planet, I would have to attack you. That's my job."

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Mort Sahl's milkman:

[madhair60]

Chappelle's satire: "I am a TERF. Trans women are not women"

[Famous Mortimer]

Both feted for their early work then went on to decades of being tedious right-wing bores? Accurate.

[sutin]

Bigotry and satire are not the same thing.

[Zetetic]

The Chappelle comedy special that has caused so much uproar, "The Closer," is often funny

Is this is a satire? Is the satire in the room right now?

[Zetetic]

I ask because I've sometimes been parodic and at the time I didn't even realise.

[dissolute ocelot]

I hope Mort Sahl was better at reading a room than some people on this forum. But I will endeavour to investigate the fuss, about Mort at least.

[g0m]

Can you do that? Just make a thread where the first post is a news article? Not like a link to the url of a news article but the entire text of the article pasted into the body of the post with no commentary? Idiot bitch? Fucker?

[McChesney Duntz]

Jesus, people...

But yeah, this probably should be in the main Mort thread rather than a new one. Mr. Admin...?

[chveik]

what are we supposed to say? this article is garbage

[McChesney Duntz]

EDIT - What am I, the fucking headmaster? Disregard all of my utterances in this arena.

[Mister Six]

Has there been a serious effort to "ban" Chapelle? The Netflix employees didn't demand that, and theirs is the only serious challenge I've seen to the streaming channel's apparent indifference to the outcry.

I get the impression that a lot of people in the media and on the right wing are pushing a "don't silence Chapelle" line against an opposition that doesn't even exist, to the benefit of nobody - except Chapelle, who gets some easy promotion for his next "they tried to silence me" sell-out stadium show, and right-wing nutters who are using trans people as a wedge issue to try to fracture the LGBT+ coalition.

Don't know much about Sahl, but if he begat Chapelle it doesn't say much good about him.

[madhair60]

From what I've seen of Sahl, it would be fair to say there's line between his comedy and Chappelle's in the broadest sense possible, i.e. they are both comic performers. I feel like it would be difficult to call Mort Sahl callous or thoughtless; again, I haven't seen much, but what I have seen is very considered even when it is challenging (which it almost always is), and far from lacking in compassion. Chappelle has been funny, he has been political, but even his older work is set far apart from Sahl's. Of course Sahl begat Dave Chappelle. He basically begat everyone.

[wrec]

Presumably this is just "guy who died is like guy currently in the news, click here immediately"

[bgmnts]

Am I a satire?

What am I a satire of, if so?

Am I a satire of myself?

[The Mollusk]

In an age of post-satire, you'd think that nothing would be passable as satire, but you're wrong. EVERYTHING IS SATIRE. Except this post haha WINK

[MortSahlFan]

Chappelle did say:

"You can kill a nigga, just don't hurt a gay person's feelings.

[Captain Z]

You can't say anything these days.

[Pink Gregory]

You can't say anything and get paid 15 million dollars these days

[The Mollusk]

Chappelle did say:

"You can kill a nigga, just don't hurt a gay person's feelings.

And that's good is it? Fucking bigot.

[thenoise]

Chappelle did say:

"You can kill a nigga, just don't hurt a gay person's feelings.

I'm pretty sure a policeman could get away with hurting a gay person's feelings after pulling their car over late at night, especially if his bodycam 'failed'. But I don't think anyone has enough privilege to kill a black person onstage as part of their Netflix special.

[Mister Six]

You can't say anything and get paid 15 million dollars these days

No, they pay you $24 million.

[MortSahlFan]

And that's good is it? Fucking bigot.

Man, you're fucking dumb. It's satire, stupid.

If you don't see the irony, you never will.

[Brundle-Fly]

It is divisive though. Bigotry shouldn't be a pissing contest.

[McChesney Duntz]

You clearly haven't studied the corrosive effects of prejudice and discrimination in the world of competitive urination, then.

(Oh, wait, I just found out the corrosion was caused by something else. Seems obvious in retrospect. Disregard.)

[madhair60]

starting to think this MortSahlFan chap might be a bit of a rum sort

[Chriddof]

Chappelle did say:

"You can kill a nigga, just don't hurt a gay person's feelings.

Gay black men exist. There are also black trans women. Black trans women are the most likely members of the transgender community to get murdered.

[Mister Six]

Yeah, Chapelle's oppression Olympics bullshit is ridiculous. Recognising the validity of trans people and pushing for acceptance and equal rights for them in no way impedes doing the same for black people.

But he's just reaching for reasons to continue being a bigot without feeling guilty.

Man, you're fucking dumb. It's satire, stupid.

If you don't see the irony, you never will.

Says the guy who got upset by all the ironic posts in the Mort Sahl death thread.

[SpiderChrist]

Man, you're fucking dumb. It's satire, stupid.

If you don't see the irony, you never will.

I say. Steady with the insults, old bean.