Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos says he “screwed up” his response to Dave Chappelle backlash
After a series of conspicuous firings, leaked internal messages, and some really bad PR for Netflix, Ted Sarandos is ready to say “my bad”
Aux News Netflix
Ted Sarandos wants you to know that he “screwed up.” After two weeks of suspensions, firings, internal memos, and people criticizing Chappelle’s latest attempt at making his transphobia funny, the Netflix co-CEO is ready to admit some wrongdoing. Not for the transphobia that he platformed, but rather for not leading “with a lot more humanity.”
In a late-night chat with Variety, Sarandos walked back some of his disastrous response to The Closer backlash. But, this time, rather than defending Dave Chappelle from his employees who were rightfully hurt by their boss’ decision to pay $24.1 million for Chappelle’s tirades about trans people, Sarandos has a new message: Whoopsie doodles.
When asked by Variety if he had any regrets about backing the transphobic comedian, Sarandos said:
Obviously, I screwed up that internal communication. I did that, and I screwed it up in two ways. First and foremost, I should have led with a lot more humanity. Meaning, I had a group of employees who were definitely feeling pain and hurt from a decision we made. And I think that needs to be acknowledged up front before you get into the nuts and bolts of anything. I didn’t do that. That was uncharacteristic for me, and it was moving fast and we were trying to answer some really specific questions that were floating. We landed with some things that were much more blanket and matter-of-fact that are not at all accurate.
Of course storytelling has real impact in the real world. I reiterate that because it’s why I work here, it’s why we do what we do. That impact can be hugely positive, and it can be quite negative. So, I would have been better in that communication. They were joining a conversation already in progress, but out of context. But that happens, internal emails go out. In all my communications I should lean into the humanity up front and not make a blanket statement that could land very differently than it was intended.
Of course, this all comes after two weeks of crisis management at Netflix. During that time, the company suspended and reinstated a trans employee who criticized the special on Twitter and fired another trans employee who leaked how much Chapelle got paid for the special. The latter also organized a company walkout in solidarity with those on staff who aren’t “team TERF.” And all this for the low, low price of $24.1 million.
Sarandos failed to elaborate on how the company might avoid this in the future. We assume this is because saying that they’re not going to platform anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric might prevent them from offering future Chappelle specials. In short, he said they’re still working on it:
We are trying to support creative freedom and artistic expression among the artists that work at Netflix. Sometimes, and we do make sure our employees understand this, because of that — because we’re trying to entertain the world, and the world is made up of folks with a lot of different sensibilities and beliefs and senses of humor and all those things — sometimes, there will be things on Netflix that you dislike. That you even find to be harmful. Where we’ll definitely draw the line is on something that would intentionally call for physically harming other people or even remove protections. For me, Intent to cause physical harm crosses the line, for sure.
Nevertheless, despite paying Chappelle an ungodly amount of money to attack trans people, Sarandos says that the company is still investing in “LGBTQ+ stories.” Stories, now, apparently mean something and have an impact on the world.
We have a creative equity fund that we’ve heavily invested in, exactly the things I believe they are asking about. We have and continue to invest enormously amounts of content dollars in LGBTQ+ stories for the world and giving them a global platform. Specifically, trans and non-binary content as well. That’s obviously continued strong, and I think we’ll continue on that path.
So there you go. Just because Sarandos is willing to pay Chappelle $24 million for what GLAAD called “anti-LGBTQ diatribes” doesn’t mean he won’t put some money towards cultivating LGBTQIA+ subscribers. Money’s money, after all.
Read the whole interview at Variety.
115 Comments
Fuck Chappell and fuck Sarandos. I hope they both get COVID.
Ok, Netflix, but be aware that you’re on thin ice. A few hundred more examples of this and I might just cancel my membership.
Maybe I can burn out my anger in the AVClub comments section against a few choice randos and keep my subscription
“We have a creative equity fund that we’ve heavily invested in, exactly the things I believe they are asking about. We have and continue to invest enormously amounts of content dollars in LGBTQ+ stories for the world and giving them a global platform. Specifically, trans and non-binary content as well. That’s obviously continued strong, and I think we’ll continue on that path.”Let me just translate this from Corporate Speak:I’d also ask that you not ungrey or reply to any transphobes and dumbasses that are inevitably gonna swarm the comments ranting about “freeze peach!” or “Censorship!” or will use a dead woman as a shield for DC’s transphobia like the Trans equivalent of “I have a black friend and he says I can say the N-word!”. If you wanna reply, don’t do it directly. Screenshot the comment and make your own thread. Also, the Dismiss button is your friend.
When are these tech geniuses going to realize that free markets, algorithms, blockchains and “radical honesty” can’t solve everything, at some point one has to make an ethical (or unethical) choice?
I would in fact argue that, by failing to make an ethical choice, they have already made an unethical one.
This reminded me: the most absolutely unhinged person I’ve ever worked with came from Netflix. They were verbally abusive to staff and tried to justify it with “radical honesty” / “but that’s how we did it at Netflix!!!!” when confronted. What is going on over there…
Reminds me of Roman Roy in Succession. “We will do whatever everyone wants us to do.”
I’d be mad at you for using that exact same Always Sunny still a second time in response to this, but… well, they haven’t actually changed their response to all this, so why should any of us?
Well, to add to what you said, Hannah Gadsby who has a Netflix deal for her content which falls under that umbrella had this to say in response.https://www.avclub.com/hannah-gadsby-doesnt-hold-back-in-telling-netflix-chief-1847870627TL;DR/save you a copy and paste plus further command – Hannah was not at all impressed with the remarks of the Netflix CEO.
Chappelle’s entire thesis has already been proven wrong. He says (and the bigots here say) that if you criticize queer people, you get canceled. No. If you criticize queer people, you get a microphone, thousands of audience members, a paycheck of $24 million dollars, a special on a major streaming platform, and millions more audience members. It’s the exact opposite of censorship. It’s a platform (and a paycheck) that almost no one else in the country will ever get.
Chappelle’s allowed to believe whatever he wants to believe, but I can’t understand why he (and J.K. Rowling, for that matter) has picked this particular hill to die on.
They’ve picked this hill to die on because they, as well as a significant portion of the population, have dehumanized trans persons enough to believe it’s not a hill at all. The backlash hasn’t been significant enough to convince them they’re wrong, unfortunately. They’ve made enough money that they’re not going to lose their platforms anytime soon.
It’s because they gotta stomp on SOMEONE and homosexuality is now widely accepted, so the trans folks were next in line.
That explains why certain bigots have moved on to transphobia — can’t legally discriminate against Black people anymore, can’t discriminate against gays anymore, so they target trans people (and any non-white immigrants). But with Chapelle, who was always pretty cutting on race issues, and Rowling, whose most famous books are basically an allegory about the evils of bigotry, it’s a little harder to figure out why they decided this is the ONE GROUP that doesn’t deserve equal treatment.I have to say I am not AS surprised with Chapelle, because he’s done bits before about how he thinks until the whole black equality issued is settled, every other marginalized group has to get in line and wait their turn. It’s a stupid, flawed argument, but it’s not a new one from him.
He’s not dying on it. He’s poking the bear on an extremely sensitive topic just to prove that he can get away with it. It’s paid off massively for him in terms of attention and money, but it’s a waste of his talents and an unnecessary punch down on some truly marginalized and helpless people.
Nuts, the 24 million he’s getting from Netflix has nothing to do with audience response to his recent specials.
“use a dead woman as a shield”a dead woman’s sister*, if I’m following their logic correctly.
Some echo in here…
Yeah no shit. Flat out telling a marginalized group that he believes something isn’t offensive while having no overlap with said group isn’t a great look. Its like a white person telling a black person something isn’t racist. If this was race related instead of gender related, Chapelle would be the one fighting with Netflix. I feel bad for any trans employees at the company, this did no favors to anyone.
His “the world is made up of folks with a lot of different sensibilities and beliefs” quote just shows he’s not even listening. Trans people, including his own staff, are not complaining about “sensibilities” and “styles of humor”, they’re saying that publishing and promoting anti-trans rants actively puts them in danger.
It doesn’t actively put them in danger, the CEO rightfully is ignoring this talking point because it’s not worth acknowledging.
This is the thing, and why it’s so maddening when we’re diverted into discussions about “canceling” or “bad words” or whatever (and hey, I get in those arguments too, I’m in that category).
We’re trying to set an agenda for how we stop violence against the trans community and how we shut down legislation harming trans people, and instead we get to have people screaming at us about our senses of humor. Progressive companies love us when they can put out a rainbow for pride month and say they hire gender diverse people, but if we actually have anything to say about how we’re treated or how little support we’re actually given – well, goodness, aren’t we just ungrateful little bastards?
Are Black people always correct about what’s racist and what’s not?Are Jewish people always correct about what’s anti-Semitic and what’s not?If not, then it’s possible for trans people to be incorrect about what’s transphobic and what’s not.
That was uncharacteristic for me, and it was moving fast and we were trying to answer some really specific questions…“I’m not normally a jackass, but things were really hard that day!”I’m a big believer that people’s true selves are revealed under stress.Of course storytelling has real impact in the real world. I reiterate that because it’s why I work here, it’s why we do what we do. One of my least favorite trends in Corporate Linguistics is turning everything into “storytelling” or similar. Netflix isn’t a “storytelling” company any more so than Viacom is a “storytelling” company. It’s a clearinghouse for content, and it mints billions (with a ‘b’, followed by ‘illions’) doing so.
Ah yes, the classic non-apology – “I’m sorry I did a bad job explaining just how little of a shit I give about your problems.”
On the one hand, vanishingly few people will be cancelling their subscriptions over this (I’d say unfortunately, but since I’m not one of them, I can’t speak), so it’s not like his strategy of vocally not giving a shit is going to do permanent harm to himself or his company. On the other hand, this BS about giving LGBTQIA+ creators some money too – and acting like that solves things – completely ignores the harm that chappelle’s rhetoric is doing, which demonstrates just how little he cares about it.
See, the problem with cancelling a subscription out of protest is you can only do it once.I wish I could cancel my Netflix subscription for this, but I already cancelled my Netflix subscription when they gave Goop a show!
Yeah, I already cancelled last year when better streaming options emerged and because Bojack was over and they decided not to bring back GLOW or Santa Claria and Teenage Bounty Hunters.
I knew saving my Netflix cancellation for a rainy day would come in handy. Just imagine I proxy cancelled for you.
I will encourage the people I steal my Netflix subscription from to cancel it.
I’m still waiting to see Gwyneth Paltrow give an in-depth demonstration with that rock.
Hell, he didn’t even say he was sorry. About anything! He just observed that he made mistakes. The whole thing had the tone of:“Huh. I bet we would’ve kept those few thousand subscribers if I did something else. ANYway. Here’s five bucks. Can I go now?”
No one in the entertainment industry has done better by the queer population than Netflix. It’s amazing how ungrateful people are.
Netflix knows exactly how many people watch their programming, so enough people simply skipping Chappelle’s special would presumably result in him not getting additional ones since he’s not attracting subscribers. Plus wasn’t the last of the series they commissioned from him? They may decide it’s not worth it going forward even if people do watch it.
The walkout is scheduled for tomorrow. Looks like Ted is nervous and is hoping this half-assed non-apology will quell employee anger and prevent the walkout from happening. Lots of luck, Ted.
If you have a Netflix account please cancel it, even for just a month, and when it asks you why then cite Chappelle and the corporate response.
Nah
No, he’s prepping for a photo-op during the walkout. He’ll be out there supporting his people, like when those cops kneeled during the BLM protests.
Poor Ted. You can’t “lead with more humanity” if you don’t have any to bring with.
At least he didn’t say he “missed the mark”, like essentially everyone at that other corporation with a Bush-Era torture apologist on the payroll who are also embroiled in a massive scandal…so that’s something, I suppose.
“We missed the mark. Literally, our lead designer tried to rape someone but he went into the wrong hotel room”
First and foremost, I should have led with a lot more humanity. Christ, humanity isn’t an appetizer or a spice, Ted.
This was supposed to be a pithy comment with a picture from Twilight Zone’s “To Serve Man” but Kinja won’t let me and nobody cares enough to fix it.
I never really think about the image posting problem as being part of Kinja’s hilariously broken code, because it’s such a small thing. Plus it’s been long enough that I’ve normalized it. But whatever the problem is, it seems to be able to be worked around by simply continuing to click “insert image” and doing the same thing 3 or 4 times. If it’s just an image with no accompanying text, hitting space or enter might be necessary. [Pictured: Me, putting Kinja in its proper place][this took four attempts to insert image]
Also for anyone else wanting the new Kinja guidelines:
1) Links are not exactly broken, they just can’t be hyperlinks. Posting a url will still always code just fine, and if it’s Youtube or certain Gifs, will actually automatically embed the media, almost as if the site was still functional.
2) Embedded links still do that weird thing where it moves the hypertext to the front of the paragraph and drops the link. If you copy text from the article that has an embedded link you can highlight it and click the “link/unlink” button under formatting to get rid of the hyperlink and have a readable quote.
Christ, Kinja is a tire fire, and it keeps getting worse.
With these corporate monsters, humanity isn’t even a garnish.
And, uh, you shouldn’t have to belatedly realize that you didn’t lead with it. Should be pretty ingrained there, Teddy boy.
lmao
It was all intentional…
“I should have led with more empty words and insincere concern to fool you into thinking I gave shit”
Christ, humanity isn’t an appetizer or a spice, Ted.Ted aka Humanity Bae.
You’d think a company with thousands of employees would have better communications/messaging folks that would read and edit all statements from the big boss before they went out.So does this mean Netflix leadership initially thought his statement was just dandy or that Ted doesn’t listen to his comms. folks.
(My office is leagues smaller than Netflix, but if there were something going out to all employees during a scandal, you better believe there would be multiple sets of eyeballs on it before it was sent.)
Fair enough, now pick up the second season of Y The Last Man, a show trans people are involved in creating in front of and behind the camera.
Ehhh it’s really not very good though…maybe if they got a different writing team?
I got to episode 5 where the girl was STILL not calling/heading for her mom while the trans guy had to have been out of his weeks worth of T, yet that hasn’t been mentioned since before they left NY.
Also almost every character sucks and is badly written, especially Yorick.
Also the source material hinges entirely on a complete lack of understanding of trans and intersex people. Though BKV has gotten better at it considering his work Saga and Paper Girls.Honestly, Hulu should have picked up the latter instead of Y: The Last Man.
I’ve heard really good things about Saga.
Aside from this week the reviews on AVClub have all been in the A and B range for the show. And the C review here this week was an outlier with the Vulture calling it excellent. But if you don’t like that fine.
I mean yay for reviews and all but it’s boring, all of the characters are either bad or stupid except for POTUS Diane Lane and 355, and the plotting is stale as a years old Saltine. Anyone who can put up with Yorick whining about Beth for more than one episode and still give it an A or B is a bad reviewer, because that is absolute shit writing right there.
https://www.avclub.com/beth-returns-and-the-first-lady-remembers-on-an-ominous-1847837108 seems like a good reviewer to me.
Last full episode I watched was 4 and it was not a B rating episode of TV.
That’s why there are comments sections under reviews. Anyway, lets get a second season so you can disagree more, #YLiveOn !
Well I wasn’t reading the reviews as they came out because I hadn’t watched the episodes yet. I don’t think there’s much of a point putting a comment on an article that’s more than a week old, so I’m commenting about the lousyness of the series here.Not gonna be watching any more of this season or a next one if it is picked up, it’s boring and not worth watching.
Right but Yorick is supposed to be like that. You wanted junior Bruce Willis? I liked the show and am disappointed they cancelled it.
Yes, the only two protagonist options are ‘whiny dipshit’ or ‘junior Bruce Willis’, ‘somewhat realistically written character’ is not an option.
So I was being facetious, as you know… But, I’ll concede that I can see how people might think the character was written TOO whiny and dipshitty given the circumstances he’s in. I was just very happy with Yorick NOT being a quasi-super hero.
Trans people are involved at lots of shows in front and behind the camera at Netflix…that’s why the Left’s rabid response is shocking. You guys really do eat your own over nothing.
LOL, NF is still going to make alphabet content because they’ve always made alphabet content. This isn’t new. They also haven’t taken down The Closer and most likely won’t.
Ted basically said “he probably didn’t communicate as good as he should’ve”.
I don’t think he has a ton more apologize for. Folks made more out of this than it was and gave it more legs. Jokes about trans people? There’s no evidence to support it leads to violence anymore than, I don’t know, transwomen going into female spaces, leading to violence. The alphabet blames trans hate for EVERY trans death that occurs and no matter the number, it’s an epidemic.
I just saw where a father who was pissed off about his daughter being raped by a supposedly trans girl (or just a boy in a dress) wanting answers at a Loudoun County hearing, a lady being mad he was asking questions and threatening to hurt the business listed on his shirt, and dude getting into a scuffle with police over the whole ordeal.
But lets blame Dave and Netflix.
I think many of you put trans as a religion over anything else.
Can this guy breathe underwater? I bet he can. Let’s run some tests.
the world is made up of folks with a lot of different sensibilities
and beliefs and senses of humor and all those things — sometimes, there
will be things on Netflix that you dislike. That you even find to be
harmful.“Bigots watch Netflix too, we need content that appeals to them.”
Right? Like, does he think this is a convincing argument? Is Netflix going to start carrying Alex Jones now? Because that’s the standard we’re applying now.
I would say that comparing David Chappelle to Alex Jones is a false equivalency.
He probably should have had a town hall meeting, where anyone who had something to say could stand up and say it to his face.Often, people just want to be heard.
Heard, and then ignored.
If people have an exchange of ideas, out in the open, listening to each other and offering opinions – and during all of this, one side makes an ask/demand, and the other side declines….I wouldn’t say anyone has been ignored here. Would you?
No, people want to be listened to. There is a difference.
Got it, listened is a better word in place of heard.Does listening have to = acquiescing to demands?
These people would say “no” but what they really mean is “yes”.
It means changing your behavior to no longer being disrespectful or an asshole. If you want to call that a demand, then that is up to you.
Hey Ted, here’s something you might wanna check out before your next train wreck: “The 9 Rules of True Apologies”, because yours? Well, #BeBest!https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-dance-connection/201409/the-9-rules-true-apologies
Just like ActiBlizz, in addition to all the other things that need to change, this isn’t over until the CEO resigns.
That’s an awfully long-winded way to non-apologize with the classic “I’m sorry if anyone took offense to my actions.”
He ain’t getting my custom back until he apologizes for airing it, reinstates everyone fired, promotes them, and removes Chappelle’s hate speech from the platform. I don’t care how good the next season of Cobra Kai is gonna be.
Lotta artificial energy pushing this reaction. Wonder if a Netflix competitor is on the way.
Ah, I see we’ve moved onto the “I’m sorry you’re upset” non-apology phase.
“I’m sorry that your face was in the way of my fist. I wholeheartedly apologize if any part of your face feels that my fist was harmful. However, at this time, I plan to continue punching you in the face. But thank you for raising your concerns about this important issue!”
tbh I kinda thought his jokes abt trans people were relatively tame :/ I mean he literally joked about a superhero who rapes a woman to get his powers in his first special and in his new one… which I haven’t watched yet, but I know he jokes abt feminists needing to be hit in the face with a blast from a fire hose or something? Kinda frustrating that jokes abt actual violence to women don’t get as much outrage as jokes abt how fragile the trans community is. He did a whole skit abt R Kelly back on Chapelle’s Show and he literally was like holding underage women in a cult and grooming them… And I guess I get it? Like I mean I’m trans too and when I first came out, I felt insecure abt my identity and unsafe a lot, and I lashed out at people online all the time cuz it was the only time I felt, like, powerful lol. So I get why people would be so angry but. It’d be nice if my fellow trans people would like, show up for women at least as much as we expect people to show up for us I guess, considering how “trans women are women” seems to be one of our favourite phrases lol and especially when his whole point in this show was about how heavily homophobia and transphobia are punished compared to other forms of bigotry, kinda feels like just proving his point imo
Kinda frustrating that jokes abt actual violence to women don’t get as much outrage as jokes abt how fragile the trans community is. I haven’t watched the special, so I don’t know. I’m also not trans so I wouldn’t really be the best judge anyway but…. is that seriously the thing we’re supposed to be reacting to? Because like…. that would be literally and exactly proving him right. Which is probably funnier than the stand up routine ever could’ve been in the first place.
Just imagine how much more Sense8 we could have gotten instead of some shitty Dave Chappelle bigotry for the $45 million they paid for his last two specials.
Yawn. I don’t care about this or the fact that Netflix isn’t going to take down the special.But if we’re going to insist on cancelling something, rather than just Chappelle, can we cancel the ideology that underpins his sentiments? What ideology is that? Well it ain’t Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism. Dave Chappelle probably finds J.K. Rowling as annoying as your average Twitter trans activist after all.People are forgetting he made a lot of offensive jokes about a number of different groups in the special. The groups he targeted were not random, there’s a common thread there. That common thread is also why, while we’re at it, we should cancel such thoughtful and whip smart luminaries as Tamika Mallory, Nick Cannon, Muhammed Ali, Etta James & I’m sure some others I’m forgetting while we’re at it.To be a bit less cutesy, I’ll add one more name to the list which should spell it out for the idiots who haven’t grasped it by now. Louis Farrakhan.
Good grief…he didn’t platform transphobia or back a transphobic comedian. A comedian told some jokes. He also lampooned numerous other segments of the populace. This is all so hyperbolic, fragile and ridiculous. You are offended by a stand-up routine…welcome to any night at any comedy club in the world within the last 60+ years. He had been working on this routine in sold-out arenas for months, with nary a complaint from those who bought tickets. He puts it on film and suddenly there are calls for Netflix to remove it and punish the artist. It’s a comedy routine designed to elicit a response. It’s an entire industry built on the concept of saying fucked up shit on stage that you might not even believe for the sole purpose of getting that response from the crowd in the room, while working out the material for months on the road with countless revisions to it and then finally recording it. Develop a premise, set it up and then land the ending. Many of them purposely shock and/or offend the audience while attempting to provoke them info laughing at something they would ordinarily be mortified by. Stand-up comedians are degenerate clowns there for our amusement. It’s not a fucking TED Talk. Congratulations. The Streisand Effect strikes once again. It’s time to move on. A comedian told jokes you didn’t like. How shocking and unprecedented.
All this consternation and I still ain’t watching the thing. I’m liking his more heartfelt stuff anymore, and the old act is a case of diminishing returns for me. There are cis het male comics making better trans jokes out there, let alone comics actually existing in the space.NOTE: The preceding was not a political statement.
Everything is political, sweetheart.
Yeah, not into people missing my point. ;-*
So I’ve done a bit of contract management in my time, and even some in the entertainment industry, but comedy specials is an area where I have absolutely no sense of the protocols, so here’s some questions:Is it normal for the contract to stipulate that the performer gets editorial control with stand-up specials? Does Dave Chappelle have editorial control? It seems highly unusual that he would, prima facie, because Netflix hired the production company to make the thing, as they always do, and the reason they always do it is so that they own it in perpetuity and with total editorial control. Most likely he was contracted to provide X minutes of material to be filmed. So follow-up questions: why can’t they cut the offensive material? They’ve already paid for it, so are they only choosing to retain it in the final cut for fear that it will alienate Chappelle next time they want to engage him?It’s going to get… I won’t say “funny” but interesting from here: Say Netflix alienates Chappelle by either censoring him or making it known that they won’t be engaging him any further, and he takes his services elsewhere. That essentially means that the other streaming platforms he courts risk being seen to publicly endorse TERF ideology (because you just know he’s going to double down from here, they always do). Chappelle gets to enjoy being yet another tedious martyr of cancel culture, while Netflix, after everything, are seen to act with integrity by not continuing with him, and it’s the rival platform who takes a pasting.Another possibility is that from here, Chappelle goes down a weirdo rabbit hole and finds some weird underground “alternative” streaming platform owned by the alt right or Russian spies or something (is there a streaming equivalent to Telegram?), and his whole routine becomes one big long rant about being cancelled, and he occasionally rears his head in the mainstream like Louie does, when someone leaks a recording of him telling a joke about killing a trans person or something, and he frames himself as too dangerous for the mainstream, leaving everyone in the mainstream basically happy he’s no longer around.The most hideous, horrifying and likely scenario if Chappelle were to get edited or dropped by Netflix is that Joe Rogan would interview him and he’d remaining irritatingly platformer from that exposure.
Platformed*
In my understanding his own production company makes them and delivers them to Netflix as is — so he does have full control. That’s not typically the case with standup specials because only a handful of comedians are set up to do that.
They can’t cut the offensive material because then the special would be 10 minutes long.Almost the entire thing is a very rich man whining that some transgender people were mean to him, after he made jokes that insulted them.
I think the unfortunate truth is also that if they did edit the special, especially now retroactively, that it would also piss off and enrage the Fox News crowd and be another PR mess for them to deal with. Netflix’s whole thing is trying to create content for everyone. And I’m not saying the conservative side watched or even cares at all about this special, but they would suddenly be enraged about it if Netflix censored it. And another unfortunate truth is that those people would actually probably be more likely to cancel their subscription than the sort of people on the left upset about it here or on twitter. It’s not really morally right but I think Netflix realizes they already pissed off a certain group with this special and aren’t trying to make anyone else mad by editing it now or removing it.
I saw the special, enjoyed it, and didn’t think it was transphobic.
I’ve never spared much thought about ‘wokeness’ until people started trying to cancel Dave Chappelle for daring to talk about this stuff.This is honestly just going to make me tune out LGBTQ issues for the foreseeable future.
kill yourself
“Obviously, I thought this would just go away but now that it’s not, here’s a bullshit statement about what I should have done, which at no point was ever on the table as a realistic possibility. Because money. But thanks for all the views, please watch our new shit”
“First and foremost, I should have led with a lot more humanity.” Corporate dudes are creepy
This is just how people are trained to talk – it’s unlikely Ted wrote any of what he said.
Hey, he was probably in the room with the thirty other people who wrote it
“Nevertheless, despite paying Chappelle an ungodly amount of money to attack trans people”Lmao, yes, sure, he “attacked” them.
I know the phrase “slippery slope” gets thrown around a lot these days, but once we decide that art can be dangerous, well that’s a slippery fucking slope.
CEOs aren’t always the “best and brightest.” It seems like the ideal initial response should have been fairly straightforward: have your chief diversity officer issue an anodyne statement that uses the right buzzwords but commits to nothing meaningful (that’s what you pay the person for!), send them off on a time-wasting employee “listening tour” or something similar, then keep your mouth shut and wait for everyone to lose interest.
Netflix is fair and balanced; they present all sides of the “people hating other people for no reason” issue. Coming up next year: they’ll pair a special viewing of “Schindler’s List” with a three-hour documentary in which anti-Semites talk about how much they hate Jews. Both sides!
I’m starting to think that this guy is kind of a jerk.
“I said the things I said because I thought I could get away with it due to my position of corruption, er.. power. Now that I can’t, I’m sorry that I couldn’t get away with it. Everything is fine now. Please continue to pay me.”
This is one of my favorite non-apologies of all time.
He said he screwed up, BUT it’s uncharacteristic of him, because you know…he’s usually so great at these things.
It reads like he took the PR team’s bullet points and forget to translate them into actual coherent and empathetic statements.
“PR Talking Points for Ted’s follow-up email:
– play up the humanity angle
– say you screwed up
– focus on people’s pain before you get into the nuts and bolts of the situation
– things were moving fast
– should have given specific answers instead of blanket statements
– again, lean into the humanity bit (not just for this email but for future ones)
– Intent to cause harm is different, capitalize Intent no matter where it ends up in a sentence, this is key
– throw them a bone and mention the equity fund
Whatever you do, don’t just copy and paste the items above into an email like you did last time. You made us all look like idiots.
– Your PR Team”
DC has the right to tell jokes, and people have the right to hear them. Netflix has the right to distribute them. Certainly people have the right to protest – but the protests are wrong-headed and reactionary. There is plenty of trans friendly content on Netflix and other streamers. We need different views. The “words kill” argument is a non-starter, and also untrue.
I started watching the latest Chappelle special, but I never got to the transphobia part. After he tripled down on a “space jews” joke that wasn’t funny the first time, I gave up. Didn’t he used to be funny? Not worth my time.