Critic nails why MAGA can dish it out but can’t take it

Jewish civilization professor and MS NOW writer Jacques Berlinerblau says he doesn’t understand why MAGA is suddenly in flames over a cruel joke at Charlie Kirk’s expense. They seem cool with cruel jokes at everybody else, he said.

In a leaked clip from a recent Madison Square Garden performance, comedian Dave Chappelle said: “Ever since that guy Charlie Kirk got murdered — and I shouldn’t say this publicly — but … I feel better.”

Nobody knows the context of the piecemeal quip in the smuggled recording, but right-wing activists are burning down the internet over it.

“The joke, if we can even call it that, was abhorrent considering Kirk was brutally publicly assassinated,” said Berlinerblau. “Yet Chappelle makes many abhorrent jokes about many different people. MAGA’s response to this one in particular reminds us of two things: They have woefully misunderstood Chapelle’s true brand, and many of them behave as if the First Amendment contains a Charlie Kirk carve-out.”

Vicious quips about the LGBTQ community, Black people, Jews, Asian Americans or people with disabilities are merely “thought-provoking, healthy and constitutionally protected forms of expressive liberty, if you ask your average MAGA enthusiast,” argued Berlinerblau. “… But any invidious reference to the assassinated Kirk is beyond the pale, dangerous and potentially punishable by jail time or the revocation of one’s visa.”

Elon Musk once demanded the firing of a ‘disgusting and cruel’ WSJ reporter who uncovered a DOGE employee Marko Elez’ racist tweets “Normalize Indian hate,” on X.

But now that Kirk is the source of a comedian’s joke Musk posts, “Dave Chappelle is cruel.”

“Far-right commentator Matt Walsh called Chappelle ‘a soulless goblin,’ ‘a monstrosity,’ ‘a maggot eaten corpse,’ a ‘morally disfigured beast’ and on his podcast seemingly seriously suggested he be arrested and deported,” said Berlinerblau — despite Chappelle clearly being a U.S. citizen born in Washington D.C.

Comedian Rob Schneider’s own career took a tumble after he upset a hospital foundation audience with “transphobic, misogynistic and anti-vax” jokes. And he once got kicked off a GOP stage after driving away former senator Cindy Hyde Smith (R-Miss.) with raunchy material.

At the time, Schneider defended his jokes, saying: 'I’m not changing my material or apologizing for my jokes to anybody. Enough with this woke bulls——. America’s sick of it."

Nevertheless, Schneider was quick to rebuke Chappelle this week: “Dave, you are now a champion of senseless violence who embodies the base ugliness of our body politic. Nobody deserves to die for engaging in conversation,” said Schneider. “And no one should ‘feel better’ after the violent murder of a husband, a father, a son and a friend. No human being deserves that.”

If MAGA wants to argue that it’s ethics dictate never to make jokes about recently murdered people, good luck saidBerlinerblau. Manosphere comedian Tony Hinchcliffe joked during the Netflix Kevin Hart roast, “Right now, George Floyd is looking up at us all, laughing so hard that he can’t breathe.”