This is hysterical! My inbox is blowing up! I don’t get anywhere near this amount of response when I write about music. As George Drakoulias said to me on the Staples Center floor, he used to argue about records, not anymore. How did the cultural zeitgeist switch so much? Did music let us down or is it just that issues of gender and democracy have more gravitas.

Which is what Dave Chappelle is trying to address here, the society we live in.

I watched it.

But first I started listening in the car on my drive back from Santa Monica, starting around the recommended 55:00, when Chappelle goes deep, focusing on the trans comedian. And what did I think? WHAT IS ALL THE HOOPLA ABOUT! I mean this has been in the news for days and no one has actually written what Chappelle actually said?

Of course there is cherry-picking. Just like they do on the right. But in context, Chappelle gets a pass. The fact that trans people want him canceled is ridiculous.

Not that I think Chappelle needs to be applauded, to a great degree he’s appealing to a dumbed-down public that believes it’s oppressed when it is reaping the fruits, like white men. Then again, affirmative action is anathema, unless it is for white people!

So I got home and I started watching from the beginning. I was cruising along and then Chappelle made a very funny but quite offensive joke about Jews and Israel. And I found it funny that there was no blowback about this. I mean usually the ADL is on this stuff. So I’m thinking, Sarah Silverman made that absolutely brilliant joke about Asian people, that got her blowback, and it was years ago. It was an intellectual twist couched in stupidity and when you thought about it you couldn’t stop laughing, it’s still hilarious today. Then again, Silverman wasn’t putting down Asians.

So the longer I watched “The Closer,” the less funny and interesting it became. I mean the man doth protest too much. That’s the nature of being a celebrity, the online hate. And the fact that he admits it gets to him, does that help the problem at all? A slew of articles in “The Wall Street Journal” have had a much greater effect. But there is no celebrity involved in that story, except for Mark Zuckerberg, and people want his money, maybe even his power, but they don’t want to hang out with him and have sex, which is the essence of a big time celebrity. They radiate a charisma that draws you to them.

So the e-mail is flowing and suddenly I’m confronted with the issue confronting the antivaxxers. Do I double down on my position or am I open to saying I’m wrong.

I WAS WRONG!

Not about everything, but about the trans brouhaha re the special. I’ll stand by a lot of peripheral things I said, but I don’t want to muddy the water, I was wrong, plain and simple.

And that’s the most important thing, but even more interesting was the feeling of belonging. Seemed like everybody had seen the special, I wanted to be a member of the club, so I could talk about it further. And I’ve learned seemingly better than Chappelle that you can’t pay attention to the feedback, the rabble-rousers. I mean come on, you’re Dave Chappelle and they’re..?

As for Twitter not being a real place. Oh yes it is, it may be virtual but it’s patently real. The news media keeps saying it’s a self-selecting society whilst addicted and quoting from it. That’s the world we now live in, where what happens online is seemingly always more interesting than real life. After all you can cater your online time to your interests. So why in hell did Netflix not use the online tools to spread the message?

It would have been very simple. Post an excerpt of the special on YouTube. It would have quieted people, put the protesters in perspective. But so worried about putting stuff outside the paywall, it didn’t. Meanwhile, HBO posted John Oliver’s complete episodes on YouTube and Bill Maher’s show is available as a free podcast moments after it finishes airing. Want to clear the air? Put a little sunlight on the issue.

And I will say if you’re a minority it’s frustrating to be talked down to by white males time and time again, it’s like you don’t even count. It’s kind of like Killer Mike on “Real Time” a couple of weeks ago. Mike said Blacks got Biden elected, they performed their magic and leveled the playing field in the Senate. But everything they were promised in return never arrived. Free community college, free child care… No, those must be secondary to the white issues, they’ve got to take one for the team. Huh? The Blacks vote time and again for Democrats and then they’re told to get in the back of the bus.

Which is kind of Chappelle’s point re the women’s movement. He’s got sympathy for Black people first. But he also understands the women’s plight better than they do. He says celebrities should fire their agents and enable the woman in the mailroom, who can’t get ahead. Look at LeBron James, he’s got a team of Blacks from his hometown, led by his childhood friend Maverick Carter, and he seems to be doing better than all his contemporaries. Carter wasn’t born into the business, but he was willing to learn, after all celebrity/Hollywood business is not rocket science. Oftentimes, it’s just a matter of leverage, albeit with bullying.

So Chappelle’s ultimate point, that the minority groups are too strident and they’re doing their cause a disservice? I hear it. He’s right about the trans people at Netflix. But why is the kerfuffle being kept alive in the press. Where people who don’t watch the special spend their time and get a misimpression. Are these scribes just reporting, or is there an underlying issue…do they really just want to preach to their subscribers?

Can we never talk about trans people again, is the whole topic taboo?

OF COURSE NOT!

Then again, the suits are scared of the talent, if the talent is big enough, it has huge leverage and opportunity. Then again, Chappelle should make more money than most of the suits, he’s the one drawing eyeballs. I mean Reed Hastings came up with the concept of Netflix, but why do the suits with little creativity end up richer than the talent, always?

Do I recommend you watch the Chappelle special?

You don’t need to. Unless you want to weigh in on this subject, i.e. the trans debate, whether Chappelle should be canceled.

And Chappelle really saves himself with his ending bit, about the trans comedian, but before that you’ll wince at times. Not that he should not be able to say what he does, but to a degree he’s fanning the flames of biased people. First and foremost the Chappelle fans, who believe he can do no wrong. I think it’s fine to blow back, and people should. I mean this is his whole routine, talking about how hard it is to be a comedian and speak your truth? Not that there aren’t great observations contained therein, but the ultimate spin…this is my last special for a while, but I’ve just got to tell you how I’ve been burdened and… It’s like the special doesn’t exist in context, it’s just for the people who watch it.

And that would be fine, except what are the basic precepts of this audience?

In the old pre-internet days, never mind the pre-cable days, we would all consume the same material and then weigh in on it. Not that I want to go back to those days, I prefer the cornucopia of content. But society has suffered, we’re no longer in it together, the truth cannot reach everybody.

Like there’s no way in hell Chappelle should be canceled for this special.

But, Netflix could have done a much better job of defending him.

And then there’s the issue of the trans protests. I get it, woke society, everybody’s got to lay off. But, once again, there is a line, where is it? It’s obviously not at Chappelle in this special, but elsewhere transphobia is rampant, and it’s not the benign transphobia Chappelle labels himself with.

So what we’ve got is a discussion point.

And informed and uninformed.

And a lack of sunshine on the underlying product.

It’s a microcosm of America in general.

And I was honest in saying I hadn’t watched the special. But no one caught that point, they equated me with the rest of the bloviators who comment on that which they’re unaware of. THAT WAS EXACTLY MY POINT! That didn’t make me right, but no one could set aside their biases for a minute and look at the issue from my perspective. If they disagreed thereafter, fine with me. But no, I’ve got scores and scores of e-mails saying WATCH THE SPECIAL! That doesn’t convince antivaxxers to get the jab, they just dig in deeper.

I won’t dig in deeper. I’ll try to crawl out of the hole I dug. I was wrong, full stop.

But the issues remain.

It’s not going to hurt Netflix.

Netflix is too big, too desirable, too embedded in people’s lives to be abandoned, to be canceled. In this way it’s like Amazon or Walmart or Facebook. We constantly hear about their deleterious effects, boycotts are initiated, but the enterprise is just too good, it fulfills a need that the public can’t get satisfied elsewhere.

Not that I’ve seen Chappelle’s special.

Reminds me of Republicans testifying about records and movies that they have not heard or seen. So I’ve been delaying weighing in until I watched the special. But I just cannot do it, I just don’t find Chappelle that funny anymore, I don’t get it. So he stands on stage and riffs, sounding like he’s making it up as he goes. There are few laugh out loud punch lines. And it’s not like it’s uber-intellectual, it’s not like you’re laughing in your head, albeit silently. Chappelle is neither George Carlin nor Richard Pryor, the two best comedians of my lifetime. Then again, he created a beloved TV show, that I also didn’t watch, and then gave the middle finger to the man, becoming a cultural icon.

Hmm…

Do I have a problem with Chappelle’s success? Of course not. Do I think he should be censored? Of course not. But then it gets more complicated.

If Netflix fires Chappelle he’ll just go somewhere else, for more money. Chappelle is a cornerstone of the outlet’s programming, the linchpin of its comedy division, a halo that brings other comedians into the fold. Remember when all comedy was on HBO? Now it’s on Netflix. And it could go somewhere else, assuming someone was willing to pay. And when you’re building a company if you’re cheap, you’re doomed.

So for months we had to hear prognosticators say that Netflix was doomed, it was losing market share, the engine was starting to sputter. And then yesterday it exceeds projections, adds 4.4 million subscribers. Proving that if you want to know what is going on in a company, talk to those in the field, especially when it’s a new field. Too often general reporters weigh in and their opinions are worthless. Bottom line? It’s about hit product. Sure, Netflix lost “The Office.” And “Friends.” They’re blue chips, the “Bonanza” and “Seinfeld” of their era. But “Bonanza” eventually faded and “Seinfeld” is now on Netflix and anybody in the visual entertainment medium knows that it’s about new product, new hit product, ergo “Squid Game,” the most talked about show on the flat screen for months. Ultimately the most viewed show on Netflix ever. People signed up to watch it. How many will sign off? Of course there are professional cancelers, but the truth is most people forget to cancel until they’re confronted with the bill, if then, then again, many people find they like the service and stay. And you keep them with more new product. Something that HBO Max and Disney+ fall down on, never mind the emaciated Apple TV+.

So, Chappelle makes anti-trans comments.

Well the truth is trans people are not a majority of the public, which you might think based on the attention they receive. Then again, that does not mean they don’t deserve protection. How many handicapped people are there? But we still have cutouts in sidewalks and bars in bathroom stalls and that’s what a good society does, take care of all of its citizens.

But that does not mean Chappelle’s words have no influence.

It’s been established that homophobia is rampant in the Black community. By putting down, making fun of trans people, you’re playing into people’s biases. How can it be that Morgan Wallen is canceled for unconsciously using the N-word and Chappelle is quite consciously beating up on minorities and goes scot-free?

Wallen’s penalty was too tough.

Chappelle is not penalized at all.

Heroes. Who are they?

Well, they’re certainly not our politicians, seen as phony and sold-out.

And almost nobody with a brain looks up to today’s “musicians,” fungible, two-dimensional mini-brands who’ll do anything for the money as they demonstrate their ignorance ad infinitum.

Then there’s Kanye. Or “Ye,” as we’re now supposed to call him. This guy is bipolar and the public just sits by and watches the train-wreck. It’s akin to Chris Farley, but at least Chris Farley went to rehab. So Kanye holds listening parties for his new album and brings on stage pariahs Da Baby and Marilyn Manson. What is the message here? It’s hard not to see this as support. So, homophobia and abuse of women are okay? Da Baby has made his comments in public. Manson has only been convicted in the court of public opinion, we don’t know the truth. Then again, ever since O.J. people no longer have respect for the opinion of legal courts. People don’t only believe in alternative facts, they construct their own list of winners and losers, they have their own morals, the national fabric has unraveled.

So Chappelle is pouring gas on the fire. And the Netflix brass are clueless. This is what happens when you hang in the ivory tower too long, you don’t know how people outside it think. Never mind not knowing what the people in your own damn building think. I can see saying Chappelle’s show has a right to be aired, but I cannot see defending the position, saying that it will cause no harm. OF COURSE IT WILL CAUSE HARM! His work legitimizes heinous viewpoints. And we know society evolves slowly, one can’t imagine gay marriage being legal in the twentieth century, never mind marijuana. People have to be informed. The message has to spread from the inside to the outside. And as John Gruden’s e-mails proved, what people say in public is one thing, in private another. Come on, MeToo? The only difference is men now shut up publicly, they still say this stuff privately, and if you don’t know it you’re not a man. Same deal with homophobic comments. They’re rampant amongst men. We’ve got so much further to go. Forward instead of backward.

So, Netflix can’t let Chappelle go, it would be an horrific business decision, like Warner Music caving to blowback and allowing Interscope to walk, ultimately aligning itself with Universal, which helped Universal become the overwhelmingly dominant record label when it used to be an also-ran.

But that does not mean Netflix is powerless.

What should Netflix do?

I’m not exactly sure.

But there is a continuum. Between letting Chappelle’s special air unfettered and canceling it. Maybe a warning in front. That’s a cliché at this point, but we need to remind people that although this is comedy, these are serious issues, just don’t buy the opinion lock, stock and barrel.

You have to remind people of the dangers, the pitfalls. You should be able to make fun of anything, but the truth is Chappelle’s opinions are beyond jokes.

Then again, I didn’t see the show. But reading about it, which is a poor substitute, I know that Chappelle is defending himself against being potentially canceled. But don’t compare Chappelle with Lenny Bruce. Chappelle is actively putting down a segment of our population, whereas Bruce was testing limits, and sacrificed his career in the process.

But it’s a different time. Without Lenny Bruce there is no modern comedy, just like without Curt Flood, there is no modern Major League Baseball.

So, we just can’t let Chappelle skate completely. It’s not like he’s saying it’s just a joke, that it’s meaningless, this is what he truly believes. And do we want everybody to be able to amplify heinous beliefs unrestricted?

Of course not.

This is what is happening with Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. And Donald Trump. Let’s see, Colin Powell not a hero? Vaccines don’t work because he died after getting inoculated? Of course the issue is much more complicated than that if you have a blood cancer like multiple myeloma, are immune-compromised. But people with these underlying conditions, LIKE MYSELF, don’t deserve attention because a huge slew of people don’t want their “freedom” impinged upon. The antivax message is so loud that we don’t realize how few people actually hold this position.

I point you to the latest e-mail from John Dick, majordomo of polling company CivicScience:

“Americans aren’t ‘divided’ over the COVID vaccine.

They’re divided over Friends (50%) versus Seinfeld (50%).

Or beer (51%) versus wine (49%).  

Or tucking in their top bed sheet (43%) or not (41%).

But not the vaccine.

By our latest count, 81% of U.S. adults have either received the COVID jab or plan to in the immediate future. Six percent remain on the fence. Just 13% are steadfastly against it (or can’t receive it). 

With over 300,000 different questions in our database, I’ll venture this ranks as one of the LEAST divided things we’ve ever studied. I can’t even tell you how rare it is when 67% of Republicans agree with 91% of Democrats. It’s top-percentile kind of stuff. 

The 13% of Americans who are anti-vax are equal to the percentage who don’t own a smartphone. It’s barely half the number who believe Bigfoot is real (26%) and nearly 50% smaller than the number who don’t believe in God (19%). It’s less common than brushing your teeth in the shower (17%) or not putting a top sheet on your bed at all (16%).

If you subtract the people who have legitimate health reasons for not getting vaccinated, the number of conscientious anti-vaxxers dips below the percentage of Americans who don’t wear deodorant (11%). 

I’m not judging any of these things (at least not out loud), but, make no mistake, they are outlying, fringe, possibly even extreme behaviors – statistically speaking.”

https://civicscience.com/weeklyemails/10-16-2021/

If someone is unvaccinated, it affects the population at large. If someone is trans… How does this affect your everyday life? You don’t like it conceptually? I mean what exactly is the problem? That trans people are going to turn other people trans? What next, Black people are going to make White people BLACK? Then again, ignorance knows no bounds.

Like the people pointing to Netflix firing a trans employee in the wake of the Chappelle fracas. THE EMPLOYEE LEAKED CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION! And if you follow the company, you’ve been stunned at what has been leaked, previously unknown facts, like how many people watched a show, what the show cost, the profit… But most people never get past the headline.

Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings have to admit that visual content has consequences. Just like smoking onscreen does. They can also say that they don’t want to censor their talent. But this blanket, knee-jerk defense, is offensive. These two should have taken the side of the trans people, seen their viewpoint and said they don’t agree with what Chappelle said. But being SO fearful of pissing off the prickly Chappelle, they immediately defended him. The way families defend a criminal in their midst.

The solution is not black and white.

But the offense is.

Everybody is vulnerable in some way. We don’t want to have language police, we don’t want to make people afraid to express a cornucopia of viewpoints. But that does not mean we let everybody’s utterances skate by, uncommented upon.

Isn’t the measure of a great society that it takes care of its most vulnerable, its most defenseless, however few in number?

And yes, it is a slippery slope. Trigger warnings for classic books. The cancellation of Abraham Lincoln. The woke police can and often do get completely out of hand. But that does not mean there are no issues. They are thorny, we need to learn how to deal with them. And Netflix did a bad job here. As for Chappelle… This is the kind of guy you want to lionize? Isn’t this the problem in America today? That outliers are considered mainstream, like Tucker Carlson above? Just because a subject is hot, just because there is money involved, that does not mean you’ve got to be hands-off…the brave dive in! It’s easy to sit on the sidelines like a politician. It’s much harder to work for solutions. What would you do?

“Crossroads”: https://amzn.to/30LsLK5

This is an incredible piece of work.

But not everybody will enjoy it. Because it’s written for a small coterie of industry insiders and Iowa Workshop believers and this makes it a bit difficult to read and is the case with all of the works lauded by these cliques, plot is secondary.

But the interior dialogue is AMAZING!

Yes, what sells best is genre fiction. Crime, mystery, romance. People read for plot. That is not “Crossroads.”

What you’ve got is a family outside Chicago in the early seventies. The father is a minister and there are four children and…what is everybody thinking?

The father is unhappy in his marriage and fixated on a young widow, who trades on her looks to get men’s attention but folds in the process. This is the nature of life, everybody has a wandering eye. How do you cope with it? After your marriage has miles, after you’ve fallen into a rut, you see someone who titillates you, you interact in the breezy way you once did with your significant other, and can you resist the pull?

I’m of a mind that you should. You’ve got history with your partner. To get this far you’ve worked through so much, made so many compromises, the new person who looks great on the surface almost never is once you peel back the layers and get close.

And the people from your past. Do you have one relationship that haunts you? That you think if you only had gone back in time and taken a different path your life would have turned out differently and you’d have ended up much happier?

And how happy are you with yourself now? You’ve gained a few pounds, you’ve lost some hair, you were just going through life and then suddenly you found you were outside the mainstream. You were doing your job, raising your children, and were less concerned with yourself and now what?

Never mind those who are so narcissistic that the focus is always them, those who never fully integrate, never mind grow up.

And just because you’re young that doesn’t mean you don’t have the equivalent interior dialogue. It’s running 24/7 through everybody. You can’t depict it in movies or TV, you can touch it in songs, but it lives most in books, assuming you decide to go there, most people don’t, some do, but almost no one as deep as Jonathan Franzen.

The best thing he ever did was reject Oprah. At the time it seemed ridiculous, a stand for nothing. Who doesn’t want to increase their audience? Well, Franzen was standing up against a system. That commoditizes books and thought. This month it’s his book, next month it’s someone else’s, aren’t we all happy together in the book group. And I’m sure book groups will assign “Crossroads” in droves, but the truth is it’s very personal. It’s nearly raw. You think about your choices, your feelings, you feel human in a world that wants to deny humanity. Humanity is for suckers, it’s all about the dollars. It’s all surface, all the time. Nitwits on parade. The uninformed denying facts. But the truth is even the lowliest laborer has an interior dialogue, it’s the essence of life.

So on one level “Crossroads” is the best book this year. Assuming you make plot secondary. If you focus on plot, read “The Great Circle,” it’s the best. But the truth is Franzen is operating on a higher plane than everybody ese. He’s reaching for the Holy Grail. He’s walking the tightrope. You have a visceral experience reading “Crossroads” that you cannot get anywhere else. He’s heads and shoulders above everybody else, and except for some of the language, Franzen is not talking down to you, he’s just relating a story.

But the word choices.

I’m an educated guy, but there were so many words I did not know. Thank god I was reading on my Kindle, so I could highlight the words and get their definitions. It’s almost akin to reading “Ulysses.” You’ve got a choice, you can skim over what you do not understand, what is not clear on the surface, to get the general feeling, to get the plot, or you can try to understand every word and have the process of reading at times slowed down to a crawl.

Which is why I believe most people won’t enjoy “Crossroads,” why even if they try they’ll stop.

There is absolutely no way these words are part of Franzen’s lexicon. I’m sure he combed the dictionary, the thesaurus, to find million dollar words to replace plain English. Why? To impress his compatriots, the industry referenced above. The truth is there’s not much money in writing novels. You read about the junk writers like James Patterson making millions, but most writers of literary fiction get by by teaching. The goal is less money than respect from their peers. It’s an insiders game that too often resembles a circle jerk. Even worse, the ever-proliferating graduate writing schools are perpetuating this syndrome. It’s all about rewriting, making the prose as dense as can be, making it less readable to appeal to a high court of readers that represents a tiny fraction of the public.

But most other writers are not even going there.

Today everybody writes a book, just like everybody makes a record. The barriers to entry are so low that everybody can play, but even worse, everybody believes they deserve attention. Writing is a skill. It’s not just words. It’s a calling, with a steep learning curve. It’s not for everybody. So thank god Franzen is attempting to climb the mountain.

But I wish he wrote a book with more plot.

For a minute there, based on the statistics at the bottom of my Kindle, I thought the final segment of the book would be an update, where everybody was today. That would have been interesting.

Instead, the period of time is quite compact. Oh, there are extended accounts of history, but just to set up what happens in this one family for a very brief period of time, a matter of months, actually.

And not all choices ring true. Certainly not those of Clem.

Then there are those touches…

You’re just walking through life a nerd, out of the mainstream, and a desirable person comes up to you and tells you you’re attractive.

Or you’re wandering through your life and someone who offends you suddenly becomes desirable and you end up in a sexual relationship that’s so fulfilling you end up questioning all your choices.

And some of the plot points are out of time and out of touch. Let me see…a sixteen year old deep into cocaine in the very early seventies?

But like I said, plot is secondary to the point being made.

And then there are the family dynamics. Who has power, who is overlooked. Does the person in trouble always get the most attention, leaving those hewing the line to sacrifice?

And in the end, no one ends up where they predicted.

That’s life.

And “Crossroads” is the greatest depiction of it this year. Nothing comes close. No other book, no movie, no song. “Crossroads” is life in a world where the public people are two-dimensional making insane comments with no regard for the truth. Public life is a play. An unbelievable comedy with tragic circumstances. Meanwhile, you’re sitting at home, watching the circus go by, feeling detached, like there’s no one on your wavelength, no one who sees the world like you, no one who feels like you, never mind feeling all the time.

But then you read “Crossroads” and find you’re not alone.

You’ll have no desire to hang with Franzen, he’s not a rock star. He’s prickly and opinionated, everything he has to say is in his words in the book. And that’s enough.

You’ll start “Crossroads” and either immediately put it down or look forward to it night after night until you unfortunately finish it. That’s right, you’d like it to continue, to see what happens to these people, how it plays out. But even more you’d like to have this literary companion, this book, to keep you rooted and warm day after day. So you’d feel less alone.

Today’s novels must be under 300 pages. Or maybe just a tad more. “Crossroads” stretches out to 681. And there’s no filler. Franzen wanted to make his statement, he didn’t want to hew to conventional wisdom re length. And it works to the book’s advantage, it’s endless, with twists and turns, just like life.

The hype has been incessant. Turning off so many of those who are paying attention. That’s right, “Crossroads” is not “The Mandalorian.” And there’s not another single in the wings, the story will not continue, the media will move on to something else imminently. But “Crossroads” will stick with those who read it. They’ll be yearning for more. But the truth is there is none. No one else is playing at this level. Never mind most people not playing at all, focusing on giving the people what they want if they’re creating at all. Franzen is giving people what they need. Too bad most people won’t read “Crossroads,” but you should. Because you’ll be touched in a way that will make you feel fully alive, and the member of a tribe. It’s not what happens on the playing field, it’s what happens inside yourself and your own personal interactions. Franzen gets that right. It’s quite an achievement.

Who would you pick to be the lead singer of your fantasy band?

Tune in today, October 19th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863 

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive  

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive