The greatest pop culture gift conservatives got this year came via a labor shutdown.
The Hollywood writers strike silenced late-night comedians for a whopping 148 days. No stale jokes protecting the Biden administration and ignoring the reality all around us.
Other comedians filled that void, delivering jokes that not only made us laugh but told essential truths. And comedy doesn’t land without truth.
Call them the comedy prophets.
Dave Chappelle had a relatively quiet 2023, by his standards. He didn’t release any new incendiary specials or spark fresh calls for cancellation. He did ruffle feathers, however, by saying what everyone but San Francisco Mayor London Breed acknowledges.
In May, Chappelle played the Golden City and roasted the once beautiful mecca.
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“What the f*** happened to this place?” he asked the crowd. He told them how he saw a man defecating outside a local restaurant. He called the city, “half-Glee, half zombie movie” and ended with this kicker.
“Y’all [n-words] need a Batman!”
Would a non-striking Stephen Colbert ever utter a line like that, with or without the expletive?
Rob Schneider spent the year performing stand-up and speaking truth to power with his gags and X account. The “Saturday Night Live” veteran once called himself a Democrat, but the party’s attacks on liberty and free speech relieved him of that label.
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Sometimes he dropped the funny to make his points. For example, he lashed out at Portland State University for drowning out speakers who disagreed with the radical trans agenda.
“Universities in America no longer promote learning or allow debate. It’s a closed system of thought run by thought police … Authoritarianism dressed up as tolerance.”
Comedian Nate Bargatze is one of the cleaner comics on the scene, so we don’t expect him to skewer societal narratives like other stand-ups. He subversively did just that during his “SNL” hosting stint.
Yes, that far-Left sketch series.
The comic, who is white, played a chef who won a soul food bake-off competition against a black competitor and repeatedly apologized for winning. The sketch set up cultural expectations while delivering big laughs.
Looking back at the sketch, given Harvard President Claudine Gay’s dramatic fall from grace makes it even funnier.
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Comedian Ryan Long does nothing but share awkward truths on stage and via his robust YouTube channel. His 2023 skits involving the “n-word” card explored the nuclear-grade offensive behind the word in ways that were funny and revealing.
Perhaps his best sketch came from tragedy. Days after Hamas’ barbaric Oct. 7 attack on Israeli citizens Long uncorked a video about a conflicted actor’s response to the atrocities.
“I honestly don’t know who to post. Usually, it’s easy. BLM? Bang! Ukraine? Bang! COVID? Bang,” Jack says. “People are probably texting each other right now, wondering where my statement is.”
“I’ve never missed a stance,” he added, noting how the “right” virtue signal Tweet can land him gigs.
It’s brilliant on so many levels.
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Podcast giant Joe Rogan continued his willingness to say what needs to be said in 2023. The “News Radio” alum took a sobering look at the Democratic Party and came away unimpressed.
“What are they gonna do with Kamala Harris? Put her on the moon?” he cracked, acknowledging the Vice President’s lousy poll numbers and word salad speeches. If President Joe Biden died, she would become the president “which is f***ing wild when you hear that lady talk.”
Another “SNL” alum proved his mettle this year.
Jim Breuer is routinely attacked as being alt-right or worse for questioning pandemic lockdowns and poking fun at the current commander in chief. He lost his cool over the accusations in September, defending his approach to comedy in the process.
“If I talk about [President Joe] Biden fumbling around on a stage, does that piss you off because you’re a Democrat or a liberal? It should piss you off as a human being, as a human being. If you see some banana walking on stage and they don’t know where it’s at, or someone who can’t speak, how is that political?
Comedian Matt Rife, a Gen Z star who always speaks his mind, slammed Snowflake Nation following his Netflix special’s November release. The “Natural Selection” showcase featured a domestic abuse joke, a riff Rife framed as testing the crowd’s tolerance for rude material.
The de facto social media firestorm erupted, and Rife responded with an “apology” that steered respondents to a helmet company to protect them from naughty jokes. It wasn’t a one-off.
Rife also torched woke white people’s willingness to humiliate themselves for social justice causes.
One TikTok bit found him mocking white liberals for appeasing black strangers. First, they’ll brag about voting for President Barack Obama. Twice. Then, they’ll claim that Jesus was black. The coup de grace?
“Well, Madea’s my favorite franchise. Gotcha! Liar! Madea is nobody’s favorite franchise, not even black people’s,” he said.
Tyler Fischer of “Lady Ballers” fame capped the year with his brilliant Dr. Jorden Peterson impression … with a twist. Fischer’s December video “Jordan Peterson: Master Class” imagines a newly woke Canadian professor dressing down some “cis white males” and praising Black Lives Matter.
“Can somebody get me an emotional support cat to pet please? If you’re petting a cat, it’s not even consensual. Forget that. Consider that rape as far as I’m concerned,” he added.
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Rife may have summed up the comedy prophets’ approach during a recent chat with, who else, the real Jordan Peterson.
The comedian shared why he posted that snarky faux apology and why it actually earned him more fans.
“I also thought that most of the outrage was happening just on Twitter and TikTok. Like, Instagram’s a far more personal app I think. And so the fact that people even saw that and took it to other platforms I thought was insane, but also proved my point even more that people who don’t even like my comedy or have never even heard of me, saw the outrage and my response to it and went, oh, that’s actually funny. It actually gained me a lot of fans because most of the world, I would feel confident in saying, the majority of people are sick of this s***.”
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Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at @HollywoodInToto.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.