I'll respond to your three enumerated points, first.
1. When I told you that I felt your commentary missed the mark, it was in regard to what I interpreted as you conveying that comedians should be held to a lower standard than everyone else, just by virtue of them being comedians. Some of your defenses of Chapelle seemed to echo such a sentiment. Now, if I totally misinterpreted where you were actually coming from or what you meant, I'm willing to admit I was wrong, and I'll apologize to you for taking your views out of context.
2. The other day on Deadline, I read that Dave Chapelle finally publicly expressed his openness to do exactly what we've been talking about for these past couple of days: engage with activists in good faith, if they come to him for good-faith dialogue. I hope there are trans activists (and other members of the LGBT community, including BIPOC members) who take him up on it, and who actually reach out to him with a sincere intent to extrapolate the social commentary he'd breached in his final comedy special. How Chapelle responds (or doesn't respond) will be very telling.
3. The hurt feelings, as you put it, are more a byproduct of stigmas that already exist. The material harm is that Dave's comments and sentiments (at least, the way they come off) normalize and "mainstream" the notion of "Oppression Olympics" and primacy of race. It becomes material when others pick up the torch and run with those sentiments. And then the media proceeds to enable/trumpet those double standards and that hypocrisy. UNLESS, of course, Dave speaks up and says, "No, wait a minute -- y'all are totally mispresenting what I was trying to say!" Whether or not he does that, in the future, is on him. "Things that happen in the future related to XY&Z" ARE valid, because unintended consequences should ALWAYS be considered, to a certain degree. Isn't that the point being made by folks who have some legitimate objections to the way in which Critical Race Theory is being taught? (I'm talking about critics from the Left and the Center -- not the right-wing shills who obviously want to take us all back to complete white supremacy). As for his comments supporting and humanizing trans people -- yes, it does count for something. It tells me that Chapelle isn't openly advocating violence, or even discrimination, against them. But that's the bare minimum for any human being to subscribe to. I'm not really interested in his friendship with Daphne, since she's no longer alive to respond to the current controversies. I'd like to hear a little bit more about the conversations that Dave has had with the LIVING trans people who are currently part of his life.
You make a valid point about the lack of good-faith criticism, as I touched upon in Point 2. And I hope we see it from people who shared my own reactions to his latest social commentary.
Again, you are correct that edgy commentary from a comedy special ultimately pales in comparison to, say, harmful legislation (or judicial rulings). But such social commentary paves the way for more people to get on the bandwagon to support the disenfranchisement of various minority groups. This isn't to say that comedians should eliminate all of their edginess. It means that when their comedy does fall flat, they should persist with BETTER COMEDY in the future...but they should also be prepared to address the public in terms of what they truly think about a topic versus a collection of jokes/anecdotes that landed with a thud.
Regarding Allison -- it doesn't surprise me that she blocked you, as you are too intelligent and logical to fall for her black militancy/supremacy and gaslighting techniques. Maybe I'll end up joining you someday in receiving the honor of being blocked by her and Marley and Rebecca -- but I rarely ever comment on their work, in the first place, because each of them have the habit of completely disregarding and shutting down ANY thoughtful or constructive criticisms of their editorial pieces. Which honestly says more about them than it does about you or I. But my point was that when authors such as Allison and Quintessa NORMALIZE the most toxic points of Chapelle's commentary, it simply gives their lemmings the green light to jump on that bandwagon more openly and enthusiastically. And then they can continue to warp the concept of "antiracism" into something nefarious and dangerous.
To your last point, I'll concede that you could be right that Dave might listen to the reasonable feedback from this latest round of controversy. But we'll have to see if he does, and how he handles it. I'm not holding my breath, but if he decides to go public to extend the dialogue I'll give him the benefit-of-the-doubt. However, I really could care less about the 95%-97% approval of "The Closer" on Rotten Tomatoes. First of all, we have no way of knowing how many of those favorable ratings came from viewers who were already pro-Chapelle and were simply doubling-down on their own confirmation biases. But in addition: even many of the fans who gave him positive marks for "The Closer" may have taken major issue with the way he said many of the things he was trying to say -- yet, on-balance, they still came away with positive perceptions because he made a lot of good/valid points and they admired his gusto and tour-de-force approach. It's like how just because 74 million Americans voted for Trump last year, that doesn't mean all 74 million of them did so for the exact same reasons or share the exact same ideology on every political issue (and, no, I didn't vote for Trump, either time). But, most of them didn't have the PRIVILEGE of being able to put out comedy specials whenever they feel like it.
