MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Dave Chappelle is one of the most influential stand-up comedians in the world. He's had a hit TV show on Comedy Central.
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JOHN RED SCOTT AND COREY HARRIS: Chapelle's show, Chapelle's show. Chapelle's show, Chapelle's show.
MARTIN: His stand-up dates sell out. He's won a prestigious Mark Twain award, and now he's got a new title to his name, landlord of a public radio station in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Chappelle has been living in Yellow Springs off and on for decades. So when the local member station, WYSO, needed a new building, Chappelle stepped up.
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MARTIN: After six years and Chappelle's capital investment, WYSO has a new home in the historic Union Schoolhouse, which Chappelle owns.
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DAVE CHAPELLE: I'm so relieved and grateful that we found a way that you guys can stay with us, and I'm really honored, even in a small way, to be part of it.
MARTIN: A day after the ribbon cutting, Chappelle and I sat down under the exposed beams of the 150-year-old building for our video interview series NPR's Newsmakers.
There have been major figures, major - OK, I'll just say it - rich people...
CHAPELLE: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
MARTIN: ...Who have wrapped their arms around media organizations before, and it has gotten inconvenient for them. Let's say, for the sake of argument, they cover a story involving some of your business interests in town in a way that you don't like. What you going to do?
CHAPELLE: Well, we'll cross that bridge. I mean, you know, it's happened before. Well, I've heard them say things or criticisms of my work on the station or on NPR. I mean, it's just - that's part of my job. But the relationship that this place has with our community preexists my career.
MARTIN: Do you see journalism and comedy being related in some way?
CHAPELLE: Incredibly.
MARTIN: How so?
CHAPELLE: Well, first of all, journalists determine what the baseline reality is. There's been times where I could write an act that's just a rebuttal to reporting. What I like about NPR's reporting - it's fact-based, but you'll cut the meat. The journalist will ask the question, well, what does that mean? Tell us what that means, and the person will explain something. This contextualization is what comedians do. We're like a nation's kidney. We help everyone metabolize not just facts, but feelings around facts or ideas. And jokes are just a shorthand for all of that, you know?
MARTIN: Do you feel like your job is to be provocative, controversial?
CHAPELLE: No. I don't court it. I just don't flinch from it. Because at the core, I'm a filthy nightclub actor. I started in smoky rooms in D.C. and, you know, and Black crowds and, you know, white crowds, and people had drinks, and they said what they said back then.
MARTIN: A lot of Black people feel the way they have to navigate the world is to keep things stuffed down, right?
CHAPELLE: That's right.
MARTIN: To be fair. So I think that a lot of Black comedians, their role has often been to give people a release, to let them say the things that they can't say when they're going to their job or whatever. But now you are international, and I wonder, do you feel like your job is different?
CHAPELLE: No. The mechanics are the same. Now I'm an ambassador of a genre, more than I was. I'm an ambassador of American culture, more than I was. I got all that flack for doing that festival in Saudi Arabia. But in Saudi, for, like, the last really maybe 15 years, they've been trying to do comedy shows in Saudi Arabia -underground shows. The jokes were like contraband. These shows would happen in people's homes. They would happen in embassies. Man, in Riyadh, that crowd watching that comedy, the first time the government let them even see something like this, it was like a baby tasting sugar. If I had choked a tiger out, they couldn't have been more impressed. They were screaming.
MARTIN: You think you're creating space for them?
CHAPELLE: I mean, at the very least, and this is not nothing. That must have felt incredibly cathartic if you can't say everything you want to say, but you see somebody model that behavior. Oh, man, you're going to want it, so if you think of all the violence and all the things we export to the Middle East, I think our culture is the best export we got.
MARTIN: But...
CHAPELLE: I didn't feel wrong being up there.
MARTIN: OK. U.S. Intelligence did make it clear that they believe that the Saudis killed Jamal Khashoggi in the embassy in Turkey, and you knew that when you went, right?
CHAPELLE: Oh, absolutely.
MARTIN: You didn't have any...
CHAPELLE: Now, I tell you...
MARTIN: You had no qualms?
CHAPELLE: I won't to say that. They asked me to go years before that. And I said no for that very reason. Since that time, the United States government does business with the Saudis. Netflix does business with the Saudis. And none of these things were an issue until I went there. And why is that? As soon as a Black man can make money off the plantation, they trying to tell you that the money is dirty. Well, OK, I'll go home and spend the money with actual slave owners on it.
MARTIN: I know you talked about comedians as being, like, the nation's kidney who process, like, all the things that people feel, like, all of it, right? We are in a moment where the president of the United States expresses things that many people find deeply offensive. And I'm just wondering, does that change your work? You know what I'm saying?
CHAPELLE: No. And he's a bad example because he has a dismissive shorthand about people. You know, you can opt out of my crap. But you shouldn't have to leave America because the president's making the block too hot for you. And I did resent that the Republican Party ran on transgender jokes. I felt like they were doing a weaponized version of what I was doing. I'll give you an example.
MARTIN: Yeah.
CHAPELLE: It was before I learned the phrase, I respectfully declined. And I was on Capitol Hill, and everybody ran up to take pictures with me from every congressional office. And then here comes Lauren Boebert, and she said, can I get a picture? And I'd already taken 40 pictures. I didn't want to say no in front of everybody. So I just took the picture. And then she posts the picture before I could even get from there to the show and says something to the effect of, just two people that knew that it's just two genders. She instantly, like, weaponized it - or politicized it. So I got to the arena, and I lit her a** up for doing that. And she should never do that, person like me. But now she knows.
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MARTIN: In our interview for NPR's Newsmaker series, Dave Chappelle and I talk a lot more about the jokes he's made about transgender people and other jokes that some find hurtful and dangerous and if he thinks President Trump is funny. Find the rest of our conversation on NPR's YouTube channel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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