[TV] The Chappelle Theory

OK, here's a link to a conspiracy theory: The Chappelle Theory - that postulates that a group of prominent African-American leaders (including Oprah, Cosby, Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton) drove comedian Dave Chappelle to financial and psychological ruin because they didn't like the way Chappelle was portraying African-Americans in his sketch show.

Now I've believed in quite a few conspiracy theories in my time, but this one had me veering between 'that sounds reasonable' and triggering my bullshit detector about every 2 sentences. Here's one example:

On Tuesday, while watching an episode of the Oprah Winfrey show, Chappelle recalled being completely stunned when Winfrey turned to the camera in the middle of interviewing Tom Cruise and said "Dave Chappelle, you should be ashamed of yourself for airing that Niggars sketch on your show this week, I'm going to make sure you never work in Hollywood again."

The image, allegedly taped by Winfrey, and transmitted to Chappelle's house under the direction of Robert L. Johnson who called in some favors with Chappelle's local affiliate station manager, terrified Chappelle.

If stuff like this (and Bill Cosby as an intimidating kingpin) were true, I reckon Chappelle should have just turned every attack on him and his family into more sketches.

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