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:	post by RustedAngel at 2004-06-18 11:17:01

By JIM CARNES, Sacramento Bee

(June 17, 9:04 am PDT) - Dave Chappelle got so angry with the crowd Tuesday
night at Sacramento's Memorial Auditorium that the stand-up comic walked off the
stage for nearly two minutes. Upon his return, he told the audience, "You people
are stupid."

What got the comic so riled up? According to Chappelle, it was audience members
who wouldn't "shut up and listen - like you're supposed to."

Chappelle is the creator and star of the No. 1-rated show on Comedy Central.
It's that fame that helped the comic sell out the nearly 4,000-seat Memorial
Auditorium weeks in advance of the show. And that popularity also caused the
frustration for the performer, as audience members continually shouted a
character's catchphrase from "Chappelle's Show" - it starts, "I'm Rick James
..." and ends with the b-word.

"The show is ruining my life," Chappelle told the crowd. Besides requiring him
to work "20 hours a day," he said, it has made him a "star," which has resulted
in the inability of fans to treat him as an individual.

"This (stand-up) is the most important thing I do, and because I'm on TV, you
make it hard for me to do it," he said.

"People can't distinguish between what's real and fake. This ain't a TV show.
You're not watching Comedy Central. I'm real up here talking."

Shouts continued to interrupt Chappelle's routine until he stopped to give a
lecture on "how comedy usually works: I say something. You mull it over and
decide whether you want to laugh or not, and then you do or not. Then I say
something else, and you think about that.

"It's worked well all across the country, but you people ..."

Performing in Sacramento, the comic said, might turn out "to be a bad idea -
like chocolate-covered fish."

Chappelle told the crowd he knew why they liked his sketch-comedy show: "Because
it's good. You know why my show is good? Because the network officials say
you're not smart enough to get what I'm doing, and every day I fight for you. I
tell them how smart you are. Turns out, I was wrong.

"You people are stupid."

Much of Chappelle's act - with its jokes about genitals,and sex talk, tales of
strip-club escapades and frequent use of the n-word - is unprintable in a family
newspaper. But that's not the best part, anyway. Chappelle is most effective
when he ventures into social commentary - race, poverty, the cult of
personality.

One of his better rants had to do with children and at what age they might be
responsible for their own lives. Elizabeth Smart, the 15-year-old Utah girl who
was kidnapped from her home, figured prominently in the commentary. He
contrasted her case - she was discovered about nine months after her abduction
only a few miles from her home - with that of 7-year-old Erica Pratt, who gnawed
through her duct tape bindings to free herself from kidnappers in Philadelphia
and was responsible for the arrest of the two men who had taken her. Pratt is
African American, and her story received much less attention than did Smart's.

Then Chappelle placed Smart's case in opposition to that of Lionel Tate of
Florida, who was convicted of murder in the death of a 6-year-old neighbor.
Smart, at 15, was considered a child. But at 14, two years after the crime, Tate
was sentenced as an adult to life in prison without parole. (A previously
rejected plea bargain was later accepted, and he is now free.)

"When is a 15-year-old a kid and a 12-year-old an adult?" he asked, indicating
it might be because one was white and one was not.

Chappelle said race relations are at such a low point in America that, "You
can't say anything real when it comes to race. That's why Bill Cosby's in such
trouble for saying black folks have got to take responsibility for their own
lives.

"I spoke at my high school last week," he said, "and I told them, 'You've got to
focus. Stop blaming white people for your problems.' "

He then added, sarcastically, " 'Learn to play basketball, tell jokes or sell
crack. That's the only way I've seen people get out.' "

Chappelle's harshest words were addressed to those audience members who worship
entertainers and athletes.

"Stop listening to celebrities," he said. "They do what they do for money -
that's all. I don't even know why you're listening to me. I've done commercials
for both Coke and Pepsi. Truth is, I can't even taste the difference, but Pepsi
paid me last, so there it is."

Celebrity worship harms the object of affection as well, Chappelle said. "One
day people love you more than they've ever loved anything in the world. And the
next, you're in front of a courthouse dancing on top of a car."

In case the audience didn't get the reference to Michael Jackson, he said, "You
know why Michael Jackson's had so many surgeries? He wanted you to like him
more."

Chappelle, obviously, will not pander to his fans. "You guys are the worst
listeners in the country," he told the Sacramento audience. "It's like 'The
Silence of the Lambs.' Without the silence."

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