BOB BARKER SAYS, REMEMBER TO HAVE YOUR COMEDIANS SPAYED AND NEUTERED! Comedian Says It’s ‘Dangerous’ For Dave Chappelle To Joke About Trans People.
The 47-year-old New Jersey native, who has appeared in Hollywood films and reality TV shows, made the remarks during her new Netflix comedy special, “Michelle Buteau: A Buteau-ful Mind at Radio City Music Hall.”
Buteau’s set included a graphic joke about her “beautiful, black, lesbian friend,” which she submitted as an example of how comedians should joke about people who fall under the LGBT acronym.
“What I’m saying is it can be done. It can be done. We can tell jokes and stories and not disparage a whole community,” Buteau said, per CNN. “We can do that, we can make it funny. You just have to work at it, right? So if you guys ever run into Dave Chappelle, can you let him know that sh**?”
Buteau said she doesn’t think she will ever run into Chappelle “because he is the GOAT.”
“And he is the GOAT, if that means going off about trans people. Dave, it’s not funny. It’s dangerous,” the comedian went on. “I can’t believe somebody would make millions and millions of dollars for making people feel unsafe. That is so wild to me.”
And that is why you fail, as Yoda would say.
Danger used to be a watchword in comedy. Rodney Dangerfield, born Jacob Cohen, had the D-word right in his stage name. As Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad wrote in their 1986 book Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, in 1981, when Dick Ebersol took over production of NBC’s Saturday Night Live after Lorne Michaels had left and his replacement, Jean Doumanian had been fired after one disastrous season, Ebersol brought with him SNL’s first head writer and National Lampoon vet, Michael O’Donoghue, and introduced him to his new cast:
“There’s somebody here you’re all going to be working for,” Dick said, “and I’d like to leave you alone with him for a little while. This is Reich Marshall Michael O’Donoghue.”
Dick went back to his office, and O’Donoghue came straight to the point.
“Everybody on the show sucks, except for Murphy,” he said. Turning toward Eddie, he added, “You, you make me laugh sometimes. But everybody else, you do nothing for me.” As he went on, his voice rose to a shout. People started cowering in their seats, which only heightened O’Donoghue’s ferocity. Jean Doumanian’s show, he said, “made me puke… Did you think there were diamonds in that dog shit you were putting out? There weren’t even zircons!” He repeated his contention that the only hope for Saturday Night now was that it would go down with a little class, with cannons blazing. Whether they could muster the guts necessary to pull that off was open to question. “Look at these walls,” he said. “They’re neat! Tidy! Sanitized! This is not the way to run a comedy show. You’re a comedy show! You know what this show is missing?”
O’Donoghue took a can of red spray paint and, in huge, two-foot letters, wrote Danger on the wall. Some of the effect was lost because it takes a while to write with spray paint, and before O’Donoghue had finished, everyone knew the word he was spelling out. But the message came across.
“That’s what’s missing!” O’Donoghue said. Then he ordered everyone to grab a can of spray paint or a Magic Marker. “Make this place look like a comedy office!” he yelled. “Comedy writers work here!”
The startled group did as commanded, covering the walls with graffiti. As they did, O’Donoghue walked out, telling people to see him individually in his office. Although some members of the staff found O’Donoghue’s little demonstration liberating, not a few were appalled. Within minutes, “the wounded,” as Dick Ebersol called them, were streaming into Dick’s office to complain. Word of what had happened quickly spread, and soon Ebersol’s phone was lighting up with calls from concerned managers, agents, and NBC executives who wanted to know what the hell was going on.
Catherine O’Hara, who had just arrived in town from Toronto [where she had been in the cast of SCTV], was one of those most shaken by her first encounter with Reich Marshall O’Donoghue. As she’d joined the others in painting the walls, she’d found herself thinking, “Why do I have a can of spray paint in my hand? This isn’t me. Why should I be here?” Soon thereafter she told Dick she was leaving. She offered to call a good friend of hers, an SCTV co-star named Robin Duke, and three days later Duke came to New York as O’Hara’s replacement.
Eddie Murphy, by contrast, hadn’t been the least bit intimidated. The next time he saw O’Donoghue, he immediately launched into a perfect imitation of O’Donoghue in the midst of his “Danger” rant. This guy, O’Donoghue said to himself, has balls.
Something sorely lack in most comedy today.