Comedian Dave Chappelle defends free speech from 'cancel culture'
Actor and stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle speaks in favor of freedom of speech while accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren reacts.
NBC News was slammed for a hit piece written against comedian Dave Chappelle following the premiere of his new Netflix stand-up special "The Closer."
The report published on Wednesday highlighted remarks he made defending "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling, who he decried was "canceled" for expressing opposition towards "erasing the concept of sex."
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"Effectually she said gender was a fact, and then the trans community got mad as s---, they started calling her a TERF," Chappelle said, referring to the woke acronym for "trans-exclusionary radical feminists."
He later declared that he was on "Team TERF," telling the audience that he agrees that "gender is a fact."
NBC News reported that Chappelle "drew a swift backlash," but then cited only three Twitter users; one who identified as a "trans woman" activist with roughly 1,000 Twitter followers, another with only 200 followers and a third was another activist with roughly 43,000 followers.
However, it was NBC News who seemed to draw a swifter backlash than Chappelle himself.
"The story cites 3 tweets, one from an account they call ‘a Twitter user’ with 200 followers. If a news story simply cites you as ‘one twitter user said..’ your opinion isn't newsworthy. It's irrelevant. Facebook is not the problem," The Spectator contributor Stephen Miller reacted. "If a news outlet cites ‘one Twitter user said..’ that is NBC going and searching for outrage. That is the journalist searching for any random account upset about Chappelle. That is NBC attempting to create a story where there isn't one. Facebook. Is. Not. The. Problem."
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"Nothing sends NBC News on a 5-alarm scramble for the Journalismobile like <checks notes> a disapproving tweet from an account with 1,027 followers," political commentator David Burge similarly wrote.
"What if we didn't write up and draw attention to every bad-faith Twitter cancellation exercise," GOP strategist Matt Whitlock suggested.
"This is activism masquerading as journalism. The author wanted to build an online outrage mob so he went looking for one," conservative writer AG Hamilton tweeted.
"MSM just *assumes* all trans and gay people have the exact same politics. We don’t," Substack journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote.
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