Dave Chappelle won’t apologize after he caused widespread anger with his recent Netflix special, The Closer, in which he made several anti-trans comments. And he even lashed out at lesbian comic Hannah Gadsby as he ranted about being “canceled.”
“I said what I said, and boy, I heard what you said,” Chappelle told the audience in a recent live performance he posted. “My God, how could I not. You said you want a safe working environment at Netflix. Well, it seems like I am the only one that can’t go to the office anymore.”
Related: Dave Chappelle declares he’s a TERF like J.K. Rowling
Chappelle also claimed he never refused to meet with Netflix’s transgender employees, as he said had been reported in the press. “If they had invited me, I would’ve accepted it, although I am confused about what we’re speaking about.”
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In The Closer, Chappelle announced he is a transgender exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) before launching into a derogatory diatribe about transgender women’s genitals.
Netflix’s co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, has refused to remove the special. He claimed in a memo that it does not cross any lines and that Chappelle is simply too popular to remove.
“Thank god for Ted Sarandos at Netflix,” Chappelle said in his video. “He’s the only one that didn’t cancel me yet.”
In the memo, Sarandos mentioned several other Netflix shows in an effort to show the company’s diversity. His list included specials by lesbian comedian Hannah Gadsby.
Gadsby later posted a message to Sarandos on social media saying that she “would prefer if you didn’t drag my name into your mess… You didn’t pay me nearly enough to deal with the real world consequences of the hate speech dog whistling you refuse to acknowledge, Ted. Fuck you and your amoral algorithm cult.”
Since the release of The Closer, some Netflix employees have passionately spoken out against it, which has led some of them to be punished.
Three employees were suspended after attending a quarterly meeting of the top 500 corporate executives where Sarandos was defending the company’s decision to go forward with the program. The employees reportedly did not know they weren’t supposed to attend the meeting and have been reinstated.
But the company has since fired B. Pagels-Minor, a Black, pregnant, transgender employee who was let go for allegedly leaking metrics about the special to the media.
Netflix employees, staged a walkout last week at the company’s Hollywood headquarters. An estimated 30 employees participated, according to Edge Media.
Despite all of this, Chappelle concluded his recent rant by emphasizing his refusal to change.
“To the transgender community, I am more than willing to give you an audience,” he said, “but you will not summon me. I am not bending to anybody’s demands.”
He then made light of the situation by issuing a list of his own demands and taking a swing at Gadsby.
“If you want to meet with me I’d be more than willing to, but I have some conditions. First of all, you cannot come if you have not watched my special from beginning to end. You must come to a place of my choosing and at a time of my choosing and thirdly, you must admit that Hannah Gadsby is not funny.”
In The Closer, Chappelle claimed to have beaten up a butch lesbian who then tried to sell the story to TMZ.
“I’m glad TMZ didn’t believe that — because I did beat the shit out of her,” he said. He also said that he beat up a gay man who tried to confront him about his transphobia.
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