A number of Comedians have always imagined themselves as truth-tellers, saying the things that most of “polite” society is afraid to say. That’s amped up during the Trump administration, and especially during a summer that’s given us both the pandemic and also the Black Lives Matter protests. Shortly after the killing of George Floyd, Dave Chappelle surprise released a new, short stand-up special, performed for a spartan, socially distancing crowd, in which he mostly kept things serious, speaking truth to power. Now, some two months later, Katt Williams has done something similar as Election Day gets closer and closer.
Ostensibly the comic’s set was a commercial, for the fashion line Supreme. But it was really an excuse for Williams to perform a set, lasting some seven minutes, to what looks like an empty crowd, his intended audience being those of us watching online. Williams did not hold back on the numerous ills that have turned the United States into a fractured, chaotic nightmare.
“If it doesn’t fit, it ain’t s*it. And things in this world are starting to not fit. Right now, we have a perfectly suitable clown running the free world,” he says in the ad. “We got a guy who’s advice included things that no decent crackhead would tell you to do with a gunshot wound.”
Williams addressed the protests that have been raging across the nation since late May. “Civil unrest is what happens every time a place is ruled by a people, and the people’s needs are not being met,” he said. He said he not only supported them, but was among the crowds.
“I’m not going to hide in a bunker. I’m on the front lines with you,” Williams said. He was optimistic about the passion displayed all over America. “Finally the chickens are coming home to roost. We are going to get rid of racism this time, once and for all, no matter what has to happen.”
Williams also discussed the pandemic, noting that it wasn’t the first one he’d experienced in his lifetime. That would be the AIDs crisis in the ’80s, which he said “filled up” Hart Island in the Bronx, an island used for mass burials. “It’s an airborne virus, folks,” he said. “If you breathe air, put on a mask.”
He then pivoted back to police brutality. “Because we can all agree breathing is important, we can all agree that you putting your knee on a man’s neck for eight minutes … It’s just murder,” Williams said.
At the end, he reminded viewers that comedians like him sometimes wind up having to step up when others won’t, saying, “I have already done more than an elected official.”
You can watch the full commercial/set in the tweet embedded above.
(Via Complex)
