The Limits Of Dave Chappelle And Kyrie Irving’s Free-Thinking (Defector, alternate link from archive.org)
Until his Instagram Live appearance, the self-proclaimed voice for the voiceless had refused to explain himself before eventually communicating his convoluted rationale by way of anonymous sources. He’s not anti-vaccine per se, but he’s not into getting vaccinated, and he seems to shun masks. He’s an advocate for those who could lose jobs and freedom to mandates, but has exhibited scant regard for those who have lost the same things and more to failed efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19. One hint of legitimate insight could be found in the middle of his meandering: “It’s just about the freedom of what I want to do.” That’s a common marker of free-thinkers: extreme self-centeredness, invariably accompanied by delusions of grandeur and persecution. They mistake the regressive for the subversive. So why can’t we stop talking about these assholes?
I suspect part of the appeal is chaos. Free-thinkers offer us the double boon of escape from an increasingly miserable reality and the vicarious thrill of giving a middle finger to the smug orthodoxy. Another aspect is Kyrie’s fame and hyper-visibility as a uniquely talented NBA champion (not) playing on a team full of famous players in a major media market. Finally, there’s the inescapable fact of his race. Black people are ripe for scapegoating. Our dysfunction is amplified by an ever-present, eager, tightly focused societal gaze. Never mind that such a gaze will always reveal more about the observers than the observed. Anthony Rizzo arguably cost the Yankees home-field advantage in the playoffs by being unvaccinated; Chris Sale was one of several unvaccinated Red Sox players who may very well still be unvaccinated in the playoffs. These are big names in big markets with big contracts. No one cares much.
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Unlike Kyrie Irving, Dave Chappelle has not only the popularity but also the credibility to influence discourse beyond bot-generated talking points (“the NBA let Magic Johnson play with HIV, but Kyrie can’t play without being vaccinated”). He’s a uniquely gifted comedian who has achieved the rare transcendence to sage. His routines have evolved from puerile humor sprinkled with societal insights to American Studies and Civil Rights faux-lectures sprinkled with humor. What a long, strange trip it’s been. Let me state up front: I think Dave Chappelle is a generally brilliant practitioner of his craft. It’s also true that I suffered through his latest special and came away thinking of it as an awkward eulogy for the comedian I long admired. Because Chappelle
has joined the ranks of the free-thinkers. It shouldn’t have surprised me, really. At any given Chappelle standup you might find a who’s who of prominent free-thinking charlatans—Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Kanye West—united by obscene wealth, conceit, contempt for authority, and a belief that their free-thinking is beyond reproach. Theirs is a view of freedom that is tantamount to selective deregulation: It’s just about the freedom of what I want to do.[…]
This discourse, in which public intellectuals empowered by social media platforms do battle with celebrities and charlatans for control of important conversations, reminds me of something the scholar Roderick Ferguson wrote: Another aspect of neoliberal strategies is the attempt to remove everyday people from history, from their right to transform the academy and the larger society. Somewhere between insular Twitter communities, academic ivory towers, free-thinking millionaires, and self-congratulatory Hollywood soirees there’s the rest of us. If there’s any dignity and relational spirit out there to still connect our struggles, or a path toward a stronger, more informed democratic society, it won’t be found in Lil Nas X’s mediocre cover of a Dolly Parton record, or her stamp of approval; it isn’t in the graffiti on AOC’s Met gala dress; it ain’t lurking in Marvel’s latest diverse casting choice; there’s no trace of it in Joe Rogan’s discussion of Ivermectin with Dr. Sanjay Gupta; it wasn’t in the shadows of Kyrie’s Instagram Live feed, and it was sadly absent from Chappelle’s Netflix special. I wish we could find a way to get popular discourse to reflect as much.