Chris Rock

Anti-Woke Brilliance

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Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

There’s a new Chris Rock Netflix special called—brilliantly—‘Selective Outrage.’ It reminded me of course of Dave Chappelle’s recent Netflix special, ‘The Closer.’

I think it tells us something important that the two most famous black comedians—seemingly on Earth—are anti-Woke and critical of identity politics. If you haven’t seen the Chappelle special, watch it. He covers race, gender, trans, etc. Chappelle makes fun—deservedly—of white people’s obsession with tokenizing black people and, as always, making it about…white people. The trans absurdism has now trampled over even racial identity politics. How do white people always end up ahead? Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.

Rock makes fun of the culture of victimhood, especially when coming from white people. A culture of ‘paper cuts,’ he says. He laughs about white wokies and their incessant need to  virtue signal (‘non-racist’ Lululemon yoga pants for example), and mocked Meghan Markle for whining about racism when it was really just run-of-the-mill family in-law obnoxiousness. He makes it clear that big corporations don’t give a crap about racism; they’re looking out for bottom lines.

Both the Chappelle and Rock shows have another thing in common: They lose some comedic ground in favor of narrative storytelling. In other words: They’re less funny overall, in favor of ranting about pop culture war stuff.

Yet it needs to be said.

I can’t help thinking: If the two most famous black comedians are critical of Wokeism, cancel culture, hypersensitivity, antiracism, white saviorism, identity politics: Isn’t this telling us something? Rock’s special was filmed in Baltimore. Much of the audience when it appeared in camera were black. When he mocked white Wokeism: they were mostly nodding vigorously.

[to read the whole *paid* piece click HERE]