DAVE CHAPPELLE has reached the “yelling at kids” phase of his public breakdown. Last Tuesday, he made a surprise appearance at his alma mater, D.C.’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts.
That was the day the school was SUPPOSED to officially rename its theater after Dave, but they postponed the honor due to concerns over comments he made about trans women in his Netflix special.
So Dave decided to show up and give people at the school a chance to voice their concerns to him directly. Almost 600 students showed up, along with faculty and staff. Parents were not notified ahead of time.
Everyone had to put their phones in a bag, though, while Dave brought a camera crew to record everything. And there was no mediator. As one parent put it . . . quote, “[This] was going to go down the way Dave Chappelle wanted it to go down.”
So how did it go down? Several students did challenge Dave, and there are reports that he was often rude and dismissive . . . sometimes cutting the kids off or responding to their concerns with jokes.
When one kid told Dave he handled this whole thing like a “child”, he replied, quote, “My friend, with all due respect, I don’t believe you could make one of the decisions I have to make on a given day.”
In response to someone else, he said, quote, “I’m better than every instrumentalist, artist, no matter what art you do in this school, right now, I’m better than all of you. I’m sure that will change. I’m sure you’ll be household names soon.”
But Dave did get serious about the issue of kids at the school getting death threats from his supporters. He said, quote, “This is my family and whether they know it or not I love these kids. I don’t want to hear about any threats to these kids. These kids don’t deserve that.”
One student who was there said, quote, “He was really kind. If [only] he [had] acted that way the whole time . . . There was no reason to be mean to us. He was just laughing at kids.”
On Friday, Dave came up with a pretty cool idea to raise money for the school. He issued a challenge: Donate money, and along with your donation, indicate whether you agree or disagree with the theater being renamed in his honor.
He says that if his haters donate more, he’ll step aside, but if his supporters win, he’ll attend the naming ceremony.
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