Dave Chapelle Attacked Onstage

Okay, fam, I have written the start of this article like 8 different times and I just cannot wrap my head around the utter lunacy of The World in 2022, so I’m just gonna dive right in:

Comedian Dave Chapelle was physically attacked onstage during a comedy show.

A man who police said was armed with a replica gun rushed a stage and tackled comedian Dave Chappelle as he was performing at a Los Angeles comedy festival late Tuesday.

The Los Angeles Police Department early Wednesday confirmed the attack, saying the weapon the man was carrying can eject a knife blade “when you discharge it correctly.” It is unclear if the fan made an attempt to use the weapon.

Several videos and accounts posted online showed the man climbing onto the front of the Hollywood Bowl stage and rushing toward Chappelle. At least one video showed the comedian falling to the floor, with several other people rushing to apprehend the person.

The attacker, a member of the audience at the show, was detained by the venue’s security team and later taken to the hospital with “superficial injuries,” the LAPD said. A video posted online of the alleged attacker appeared to the unidentified man on a stretcher with his elbow bent at an odd angle.

Neither Chappelle nor any officer was injured, police said.

Chapelle was performing as part of Netflix is a Joke: The Festival in a “phone-free experience” (which, fair enough), so for once, video footage is hard to come by, but a Buzzfeed News reporter (how’s that for an oxymoron?) posted a video of the attacker being loaded into an ambulance.

Just came out of the Hollywood Bowl where a man charged and tackled Dave Chapelle on stage and got his ass kicked by at least 10 people.

LAPD and LAFD are now loading him into an ambulance pic.twitter.com/7SXPe9e8az

— Brianna Sacks (@bri_sacks) May 4, 2022

NBC Los Angeles went on to say that a motive behind the attack “is not clear,” which is a joke funnier than anything even Chapelle could write. Like there HASN’T been worldwide vitriol directed against the comedian for his supposedly “transphobic” jokes?? Like one of the biggest companies in media DIDN’T stage a walkout over Netflix hosting his special????? Come on, NBC. Come on.

I give it 24 hours before the media turns it a white supremacy issue.

I am genuinely irate, and not just because I’ve been proven wrong in my assertion that Will Smith’s attack on Chris Rock wouldn’t lead to a rash of similar incidents. No, the attacker didn’t shout “FOR JADA!” as he leaped at Chapelle, but it would require an amount of willful ignorance deeper than the lies I tell myself every morning about Mumford & Sons getting back together to believe that Smith’s virtual lack of consequences for slapping the sh*t out of someone for telling a joke he didn’t like (or, more to the point, believed his wife didn’t like) didn’t embolden this individual.

I’M SO INCENSED I CAN’T EVEN TAKE A BREATH IN MY WRITING PLEASE EXCUSE THESE DICKENSIAN RUN-ON SENTENCES.

If comedians as famous, popular, and high-profile as Dave Chapelle aren’t safe in venues like the Hollywood Bowl with the kind of security only big money can buy, then comedy is effectively dead. I don’t want to sound fatalistic or alarmist, but come on. It was bad enough when people took jokes out of context onto social media, but now the precedent has been set for immediate, violent action. What chance do those of us who aren’t world famous stand?

And before anyone throws out the “just don’t tell offensive jokes” line, I’m just going to preemptively quote Mike Birbiglia: “All jokes are offensive to someone.” If you can’t understand why comedy cannot and should not be perfectly clean and unoffensive, watch his special Thank God for Jokes. Or send me a message I could literally go on for hours but Birbiglia probably says it better. Point is, comedy exists to subvert, and if we decide that certain things are unsubvertible, we lose free and open discourse.

I can’t help but think of a clever, but slightly off-color, joke about #metoo that someone told 5 years ago in a small capital city where I used to live. It caused such an uproar that the guy who told it was blacklisted from every comedy venue (read: 1) in the town for like, a full year (which seemed excessive even at the time, but damn was the social media drama fun to watch). That was in 2017. I genuinely shudder to think what would’ve happened if he’d told it today– if Dave Chapelle can get tackled onstage, some nobody (no offense if you’re reading this, champ) in an open mic doesn’t stand a chance. 

We cannot let this happen. I’m calling on all of you to join me in saving the world: Tell off-color jokes. Laugh at them. Laugh before it’s too late.