Chappelle addresses sexual harassment, stumbles in process

digging a hole to prove that he can escape. But in this new special, for the first time, they also seem like tired shtick.

“The Bird Revelation” is one of four specials he released in 2017. In another of those, “The Age of Spin,” he brings up a rumor that Bill Cosby paid for the microphone that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. used in his “I Have a Dream” speech.

It was Chappelle’s way of expressing how difficult it is to give up the comic as one of his heroes. In “Bird,” he again leans on the gravitas of King to pivot from the pain caused by sexual misconduct. Chappelle criticizes the “brittle spirit” of the female comic who said Louis C.K. masturbating in front of her hurt her career before imagining what would happen if Louis C.K. masturbated in front of the civil-rights leader, prompting him to give up his movement.

He says that if Brad Pitt had done what Weinstein did, the response would have been different. (“Girl would have been like: I got the part.”)

But Chappelle is just rehashing a Chris Rock bit on sexual harassment from the 1990s (“If Clarence Thomas looked like Denzel Washington ...”). It’s a joke that hasn’t aged well, and this new version doesn’t do Chappelle any favors.

Chappelle — who has always been far more savvy and engaged on race than on gender — isn’t aiming merely for transgression. He embraces this new movement, calls himself a feminist and offers sober political analysis, with a passionate argument for focusing on structural issues.

“You got all the bad guys scared, and that’s good,” he says. “But the minute they’re not scared anymore, it will get worse than it was before. Fear does not make lasting peace.”