Michelle Buteau schools Dave Chappelle on how to tell a queer joke without being transphobic: “Can you make it funny?”
A post shared by Netflix US (@netflix)Michelle Buteau has some words of advice for fellow stand-up comics who still rely on gay and trans jokes and punching down at the LGBTQ+ community in their sets: do better.
Or, at the very least, make your bad jokes funny!In her new comedy special Michelle Buteau: A Buteau-ful Mind at Radio City Music Hall, which dropped hit Netflix December 31, 47-year-old Buteau takes aim at arguably the most famous anti-LGBTQ+ comedian of our time: Dave Chappelle.At one point, she recalls a story about a Black lesbian friend then notes the mixed reaction her story seems to be getting from the audience.
Some find the bit funny and laugh, while others appear uncomfortable. Subscribe to our newsletter for a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.“We can tell jokes and stories and not disparage a whole community,” she says. “We can do that.
We can make it funny. We just have to work at it. So, if you ever run into Dave Chappelle, can you let him know that sh*t? I don’t think he knows that sh*t.”She then calls him “the GOAT,” an acronym for “greatest of all time,” then clarifies, for Chappelle, it stands for “going off on trans people.”In case you need a recap: In 2021, Chappelle caused major controversy when he made several “jokes” about the transgender community in his Netflix special The Closer, including calling himself “Team TERF,” an acronym for “trans exclusionary radical feminist.”Despite calls for the special to be yanked from the streamer, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos repeatedly defended Chappelle’s transphobia as freedom of artistic expression, resulting in several Netflix employees staging a walkout that October.Chappelle, who also received criticism for making “jokes” about the gay and trans communities in his 2019 Netflix special Sticks & Stones, later responded by saying, “If this is what being canceled is, I love it.”“Dave, it’s not funny,” Buteau says in her new.
