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From The Riviera To The Sea
It shouldn’t be possible for a guy with over $50 million in the bank to make us feel bad about his financial problems.
But in his 2020 comedy special, Unforgiven, Dave Chappelle pulled it off by calling out the only group of people more obnoxious than whining multi-millionaires: bullies.
Dave tells the story of himself as a fifteen-year-old kid, just starting out in comedy. An older comedian, a comedy veteran, asks if he can “borrow” one of Dave’s most popular jokes, just once, for an audition at a different club.
And while you’re probably aware of how hard it is to get something back once the wrong person “borrows” it, Dave was too young and naive to understand any of that. So he says, “Sure.”
Predictably enough, a few weeks later, Dave catches the comedian “borrowing” his joke again during a standup performance. And when Dave confronts him, when he refuses to hand over his hard work, the man stands up, towering over Dave’s scrawny, fifteen-year-old frame.
“Really? I can just take it,” he says.
And he does.
Dave was too small to fight back, there’s no court of appeal for stolen jokes, so the bully just…gets away with it. And…
