On Saturday, Dave Chappelle will host the first Saturday Night Live, which marks his highly anticipated return to sketch comedy after abruptly pulling the plug on Chappelle’s Show during production on its third season back in 2005. Chappelle is also the show’s first host since the election earlier this week. While many of us have spent the last few days preoccupied with what comes next, we can hope that the comedian’s unapologetic style will give everyone some perspective on what’s to come.
After all, during his show’s two-season run in 2003-20004, he was hailed as one of the most outspoken, subversive, and profoundly insightful comedians of the era. In anticipation of this Saturday’s SNL (and some desperately needed comic relief), here are the best political sketches from Chappelle’s Show.
“Dave’s Political Ads”
In a pair of 30-second sketches modeled after a standard political ad, Dave Chappelle mugs for the camera while listing off the problems like health care and sex education. As he hams up his political demeanor, it becomes clear his solutions are all completely over-the-top, like fake Canadian IDs and making high school kids watch elderly school administrators have sex on stage. (Though, honestly, does seem like a pretty effective deterrent to teen pregnancy.)
“Black Howard Dean”
Part of Chappelle’s Show’s “lost episodes,” sketches produced for what would have been the show’s third season, “Black Howard Dean” was another of the comedian’s oft-repeated speculation on how a black person would act, and be treated, if in the same position as a white politician. Here he takes a look at former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who ran for president in 2004. While Chappelle mocks Howard’s overstated enthusiasm, he ends the sketch with clip of Dean himself, showing that this particular caricature wasn’t all that that much of an exaggeration.
“Profiles In Courage”
Framed by Chappelle telling his studio audience about some advice his grandmother had given him — specifically, don’t be the first black person to do anything — “Profiles In Courage” is framed as a prestigious TV documentary, one that tells the story of Cyrus Holloway, a black steel mill worker in 1954 who just needed to use the restroom. Being that this was a time of segregation, and Holloway deemed the “Blacks Only” restroom not being “fit for Christian buttcheeks,” he opted to use the “Whites Only” restroom, only to end up arrested. A comedic dissection of the pre-Civil Rights era, it proves that Chappelle can find humor even in the worst corners of American history.
“Real Movies: Deep Impact“
Near the end of his show’s first season in 2003, Chappelle presented his take on 1998’s Deep Impact, which starred Morgan Freeman as a president forced to confront the scenario of Earth being threatened with destruction by an asteroid. In “Real Movies: Deep Impact“, the public places the blame entirely on the black president. In response, he holds a press conference simply to become a give-no-f*cks leader who revealed scores of highly classified information to the press before introducing his alien buddy, Bibble, and teleporting off to his spaceship. As it turns out, even some of Chappelle’s Shows’ more outlandish premises would end up coming true years later, even if to a far lesser degree.
“The Racial Draft”
Based on the premise that delegations from the major races would choose their celebrity constituents to avoid any confusion in the future, we’re treated to an eventful first round of The Racial Draft. The sketch took aim at issues like cultural appropriation and identity in Chappelle’s typically unrepentant style. Its politics-meets-sports combination, complete with commentators on the sidelines, also wound up as a sort-of precursor to the sensationalized political landscape we find ourselves in today.
“Frontline: Clayton Bigsby”
The closing sketch of the first ever Chappelle’s Show showed the world the kind of gasp-inducing comedy its host was capable of creating. Told as a segment for the news program, “Frontline: Clayton Bigsby” follows the show’s host as he makes his way to the deep South to meet notorious Klan leader and white supremacist, Clayton Bigsby. Blind since birth, Bigsby, who spent more or less his entire life in one town, ends up becoming a figurehead in the White Nationalist movement and a fairly prolific author.
The catch in all this is that Clayton himself is black, and completely unaware of that fact, making him the world’s lone black white supremacist. With its keen observations and layered subtext about the role of racism in society, it’s as uncomfortably relevant today as it is hilarious.
“Black Bush”
Where the “Black President” sketch took a look at a fictional president, Chappelle pivoted his focus in “Black Bush,” channeling our 44th President, but as a black man. The sketch becomes a full-on expose of the cultural divide between white and black America. When introducing the the sketch as a look at how a predominantly white establishment would do everything in their power to stop a black President, he mirrors the broad strokes of what W. did during his first term in office while facing much more scrutiny from the establishment. And he did it all four years before Barack Obama would spend the two full terms living out a similar scenario from the Oval Office.
