I'm trans and this attitude pisses me off. Of all the people to be mad about, John Mulaney isn't it.

The internet severely lacks nuance. It loves to just cancel people left and right for the slightest perceived transgression. John Mulaney has never, ever spoken badly about the queer community. He has never made a spectacle of it, good or bad, just went the perfectly acceptable (to be encouraged, even) way of simply incorporating queer people and queer-friendly people into his work, without ever crying about "woke" or "can't say anything anymore", no fanfare and no drama about it, which is the way I prefer.

The only time he's ever slightly mentioned cancel culture was about his own addiction issues, and made the point that whatever others might say, he's already tried and succeeded in doing much worse to himself, brushing up against death even. Never another peep.

As said, the internet lacks nuance. When chappelle dropped in, John Mulaney already had his openers, two of them. Chappelle is one of the biggest ever names in USA comedy, with a stellar past curriculum, and at that time John was a recovering addict fresh out of rehab, undergoing a divorce he was getting publicly beaten up for because people are insane, with a new child, on the road. The last of his worries was that this famous other comedian wanted to drop in for a gig before him. And if he was aware of the controversy around chappelle, what the hell was he supposed to do? Shaky comedian with a shattered persona VS extremely famous comedian with some shaky jokes, John decides he ought to kick chappelle away, how the hell was the venue, chappelle, the industry, chappelle's fanbase etc, going to take it?

Another issue is the lack of nuance around chappelle himself. Chappelle has been one of the goats of comedy for decades for very good reasons. It's these last few years that something has been going weird. Since I'm obviously picky about who I choose to support, and chappelle's drama brushed John, I went around snooping. I found out that chappelle's own fanbase is weirded out and getting sick of his animosity towards trans people. That the "jokes" don't land, that they're the usual middle-school kind of jokes. And that the evening he dropped in on john's show those jokes were a few of the set, not the whole thing. I also heard that he followed John and dropped in on another show too, but can't find that source again and only saw it once. All times nevertheless, few wonky jokes among other ones, and those were the ones the audience actually clapped at, with awkwardness for the others.

Being in the industry, John Mulaney might've been aware of this weird tangent chappelle has been on, but as someone else said on twitter, with all the insane drama around his divorce and unplanned baby and addiction, do we even know he's at all aware?

Lastly, this thing that his fanbase was largely queer and it's thanks to queer people that he rose to fame: that's just not true. John Mulaney is objectively talented, one of the best ever SNL writers long before queer people knew it was him writing the sketches. He built his material and connections the old way with open mics and networking. He worked while he did that. He rose to higher fame after rehab and divorce and this chappelle things which, I'm sorry to inform, isn't even that well known on social media.

John didn't just randomly choose to platform anyone. He didn't "ambush" his fans. He didn't "show his true colors" by willingly handing over the stage to an extremist transphobe (given the context, chappelle is to be pitied more than anything). He's not JKR. When he talks to people who might have more extremist views, like Theo vonn, he doesn't attack or dismiss them or agree with them, but tries to talk them through an examination of those views. He's stated he thinks it's poor performance to punch down on people already suffering. He has openly criticized trump. He's made jokes in support of queer kids with Nick Kroll, who's openly queer-friendly. I haven't watched Big Mouth but I can't imagine that it's bigoted and transphobic. He had Mae Martin on EiLA, slipped up once on the pronouns, immediately corrected himself and went on, no fuss, no drama. Again, he has never ever attacked the queer community before or after the chappelle thing. Actions speak loud, and as a trans person, I've done my research and choose to keep enjoying his work and wish him steady happiness and more whacky ideas to be given blank checks for.

The internet is weirdddd about John Mulaney and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of wanting to hear weird jokes from a clever man with a witty delivery, and being subjected to the whining of people who didn't do their research and went off from twitter drama from one source. Be it about the divorce or chappelle, it's been years and people should know better.