Dave Chappelle Calls the Victims of Louis C.K.’s Sexual Misconduct “Weak”

Dave Chappelle released two new stand-up specials on Netflix yesterday, and in one of them he calls the women who Louis C.K. admits to masturbating in front of “weak.”

In The Bird Revelation, Chappelle addresses the scandal that has derailed C.K.’s career:

“One lady said, ‘Louis C.K. masturbated in front of me, ruined my comedy dreams.’ Word? Well, then I dare say, madam, you may have never had a dream. Come on man, that’s a brittle spirit.”

At another point he says:

“I hate to say, y’all, they sounded weak. I know it sounds fucked up. I’m not supposed to say that, but one of these ladies was like, ‘Louis C.K. was masturbating while I was on the phone with him.’ Bitch, you don’t know how to hang up a phone?”

Chappelle has released four specials through Netflix in the last year, and this is not the first time his comments have caused controversy (or, indeed, seemed to exist primarily just to stoke controversy). His earlier two Netflix specials were filled with jokes that many thought crossed the line from edgy humor into thoughtlessness or outright cruelty. As stand-up comedian Jourdain Searles wrote for Paste, Chappelle filled “both his specials with rape jokes, trans jokes and gay jokes. He makes light of a black woman being beaten, Janay Rice’s abuse at the hands of her husband and Bill Cosby’s rape allegations.”

Chappelle can still be one of the best comedians working today when he’s not busy ridiculing and discounting marginalized and victimized people. All four of his Netflix specials are full of hilarious and incisive observations about society today. You just have to be able to tolerate regressive, uninspired, unfunny material like this to find it. And if you can’t, well, it’s pretty easy to understand why.