GOAT?

Netflix Comedian Goes Off on Dave Chappelle: You’re ‘Not Funny’

“I can’t believe somebody would make millions and millions of dollars for making people feel unsafe,” comedian Michelle Buteau says in her new Netflix special.

Comedian Michelle Buteau made history on Tuesday when she became the first female comedian to perform a stand-up special at Radio City Music Hall. And she used her huge platform to take on one of Netflix’s most powerful comics, Dave Chappelle.

At just about the halfway point of her new hour, Buteau shares a story about her “Black lesbian friend” and then takes a few minutes to break down the difference between her approach to comedy and those who she believes traffic in hateful stereotypes.

“We can tell jokes and stories and not disparage a whole community,” she says, prompting loud applause from the crowd. “We can do that, we just have to work at it, right?”

Then she makes her point explicit: “So, if you guys ever run into Dave Chappelle can you let him know that s--t? I don’t think he knows that s--t.”

As the audience explodes, Buteau goes on to refer to Chappelle as the “GOAT,” which his fans use to mean “greatest of all time,” but she reinterprets as “going off about trans people.”

“Dave, it’s not funny, it’s dangerous,” she adds. “Make it funny. I can’t believe somebody would make millions and millions of dollars for making people feel unsafe. That is so wild to me, truly.” Instead, Buteau tells her crowd that she wants to “make millions and millions of dollars for making people feel safe, seen, secure, heard and entertained.” Then she moves on to material about women who are dating the wrong men.

Buteau’s special is premiering a year to the day after Chappelle’s most recent Netflix hour The Dreamer, which saw him continue to fixate on material about trans people. Netflix faced an employee walk-out in 2021 following the uproar over Chappelle’s special The Closer, in which he declared himself “team TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), and accused the LGBTQ community of “punching down on my people.”

At the time, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos admitted that he “screwed up” the internal handling of the uproar within the streaming company, but has always maintained both support for Chappelle, and a commitment to free speech for comedians on Netflix.

“People like to think about all kinds of diversity except for diversity of thought,” Sarandos said in an interview earlier this year. “The point I was trying to make when people got angry was the idea that if you don’t like that idea, switch it and find another one. Find one you do like.”

Giving a comedian like Buteau a big new special on New Year’s Eve goes a long way toward proving he meant what he said.

For more, listen to Michelle Buteau talk about Trump, #MeToo and how stand-up “saved” her after 9/11 on The Last Laugh podcast.

Matt WilsteinEditorial Director

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