OPINION:
Comedian Dave Chappelle sparked controversy during a recent performance at Madison Square Garden when he joked that he had he “feels better” since the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Mr. Chappelle has built a career on provocative humor. Only brief leaked clips of the performance are publicly available, so the routine’s full context is unknown.
My guess is that Mr. Chappelle’s primary goal was not to express genuine joy over Kirk’s murder, but to provoke his audience. If so, mission accomplished.
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These days, it seems harder than ever to shock people with political rhetoric. Ordinary insults — calling someone stupid, clueless or worse — barely register now. After years of overheated political discourse, we have become desensitized.
To command attention today, rhetoric often has to be more extreme than it would have been a decade ago. The boundaries keep moving and what once would have been considered beyond the pale is now treated as just another punchline.
That is what should concern us. When applause follows a joke celebrating the assassination of a political opponent, we have crossed a line. Political violence has become entertainment. Once murder is treated as a punchline instead of an atrocity, we have lowered the moral barrier that separates civilized political disagreement from barbarism.
History suggests that when a society becomes comfortable laughing at political murder, it is already moving in a dangerous direction.
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