Chappelle touched on Diddy and his hurt feelings over realizing why he’d never been invited to a Freak Off party: “Oh my gosh, I’m ugly!” Moreover, “If you really study my face, clearly I have snitch energy.” Chappelle knew he was losing the crowd a little when he started riffing about the rap mogul’s baby oil consumption, as he paused to tap at his microphone. He pivoted back to the fires, musing that if Diddy hadn’t been caught, there’d be a mushroom cloud over his house with all that baby oil.
Then Chappelle hoisted himself off his stool, his voice turning lyrical. This Diddy nonsense, what does it matter when Monday looms—and half of us will spend the day with fingers in our ears, turned away from the screen while diehard MAGA warriors stand outside in the freezing DC cold? On the day that Trump becomes the 47th president of the United States, the flags will be, or should be, at half-mast for Jimmy Carter. And here was the surprise hero of Chappelle’s monologue. He described being in the Middle East when Carter made a visit to Israel and decided, against Israel’s wishes, to visit the Palestinian territory. “I will never forget the images of a former American president walking with little to no security while thousands of Palestinians were cheering him on… I don’t know if that’s a good president, but that right there I am sure is a great man.” How’s that for a eulogy?
“So Donald Trump, I know you watch the show”—and here, Chappelle flashed his impish grin. “Man, remember whether people voted for you or not, they’re all counting on you.” Those words seem trite on paper, but Chappelle delivered them so sincerely, and with real gravity. “Good luck. Please do better next time. Please all of us, do better next time.” I don’t know that Trump is capable of shame, but surely this is a better response to him than denial or cheap, ineffectual scorn.
“Yeah, it serves these celebrities right,” Chappelle said at the beginning of his monologue, imitating folks griping about the LA fires: “I hope their houses burn down.” He paused, getting ready to flip the script. “You see, that right there. That’s why I hate poor people. Because they can’t see past their own pain.”
“Do not forget your humanity, and please have empathy for displaced people whether they’re in the Palisades or Palestine,” he said, completing his circle. Seeing past our own pain might be what gets us through the next four years, and allows for something realer and better in the future. At the end, Chappelle wished the audience good night. By the time he remembered the job at hand—to introduce musical guest GloRilla and promise a great show ahead—we’d already cut to commercials. Lorne Michaels was right. What we really needed was someone we trusted to make a little sense of the world, then tell us good night and good luck.
