Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos had the right idea last week when he defended the streaming service’s decision to air Dave Chappelle’s standup special The Closer. In internal messages to employees, he said he understood their concerns about Chappelle’s (mild) jokes about transgenderism but didn’t think the special crossed a line. He dismissed the idea that Chappelle’s words constituted, or could reasonably be construed to incite, violence. He said people had to learn to live with others who hold differing points of view. He said that Chappelle was a mainstay of Netflix who is extremely popular with viewers and that he didn’t believe in censoring artists.
Yesterday, Sarandos fed all of those entirely correct ideas into the shredder and begged the mob for forgiveness. It won’t work. Does it ever?
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