Intolerant of Chappelle’s Trans Jokes, Lefty Netflix Workers Walk Out

BUCK: Clay, this is interesting, about Netflix.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: We can start every segment with, “This is interesting,” because obviously that’s why we’re telling people about it. But Dave Chappelle… I don’t want to get into a cultural critic, but this is not his best… I was gonna say, this is not his funniest set. It was okay. There were some funny moments. There are kind of some (buzzer) moments. But he had a long commentary about the trans community specifically; so within the LGBTQ+ world, but the trans community.

And there are a lot of people on the left and from the LGBTQ++ community and the trans community that are very angry about this. And there’s now a Netflix employee walkout underway today in Los Angeles, because they say that Dave Chappelle’s comments were transphobic, and it is putting people in danger, the employees have released a list of demands.

CLAY: Of course, like all hostage situations.

BUCK: All terrorists, right? They’re releasing a list of commands. They want three areas: “Content investment, employee relations and safety, and harm reduction.” They want “more investing in trans and nonbinary content along with more input from marginalized communities around hopefully harmful inflict at Netflix.” Netflix is broke, it will not go broke, but they’ve got a problem on their hands.

CLAY: Ted Sarandos, who is one of the cochief executive officers of Netflix, came out and apologized for not being sensitive enough in his initial comments about the Dave Chappelle special. Here’s why I think this matters. You might be out there; you might say, “Hey, I don’t care about Netflix comedians.” It matters because as who gets canceled changes, the overall power of cancel culture declines because it starts to feed on itself.

This is what happens with all revolutions. Eventually, they end up guillotining their true believers. Remember Robespierre got guillotined during the French Revolution because the purity contest starts to pit ideologues against each other. Trump was — in their mind in the woke universe — the Great Satan who they could ally against. Without Trump, they don’t have any easy foil, and so they’re starting to turn internal.

So, Buck, if they cancel a black comedian because his jokes are not considered to be acceptable, a lot of black people who are fans of Dave Chappelle — and white and Asian and Hispanic fans, too — are gonna say, “Wait a moment, they’re starting to turn on whose otherwise be a member of their coalition.”

BUCK: Can I tell you where this is going?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: This is gonna turn into Netflix will make concessions to the trans demands. I didn’t mean for that to rhyme, but it did.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Trans demands here, and that will be the way they fix it. They’ll say, “Oh, well, we’ll address the concerns.” But they’re not pulling down the Chappelle special, they’re not pulling it off their streaming service it’s not gonna happen. Because you have, as you point out, a very successful black comedian, and there are sensitivities on the left around what that would mean as well. So I don’t think he’s gonna get canceled nor will his special. But you will see a whole lot more, you know, Netflix specials and series, scripted series about nonbinary characters, et cetera.