Comedians are not so obviously engaged in a partly scripted, partly improvised performance to tell a story. Neither actors nor comedians are just “saying what they mean”. Don Rickles doesn’t really hate all of the people he insults. The differences between the two professions doesn’t make a difference.

I have no problems with dialogue. Anything nasty you want to say about Chapelle, feel free. I actually think he’s only a B list comedian, nowhere near on the level of Chris Rock, for example. What I object to is deplatforming: The idea that we have moral obligation to silence him for what he said. I think we do have such an obligation for anyone who explicitly calls for physical violence against any individual or group. Such speech has legally been classified as assault in English common law for centuries. But I saw the entire show, and Chapelle did no such thing. He simply told some tired jokes about trans people. His critics are apparently claiming that saying a person or group is funny is tantamount to saying they should be beaten up. I don’t buy that.