Watching comedian Dave Chappelle guest-host “Saturday Night Live” earlier this month, I was mesmerized – and not just because of Chappelle’s shocking, 16-minute monologue about American life in the final weeks of 2020.
No, I was transfixed by Chappelle smoking a cigarette on national television.
It has been years since I’ve seen anybody do that, and I guess I thought it was forbidden. I grew up watching Johnny Carson smoke on “The Tonight Show,” of course, but that seems a million years ago.
Chappelle was wearing a suit and tie – like something out of the “Mad Men” wardrobe department – and he would occasionally lean over to puff on a cigarette that was resting in an ash tray on top of a stool.
How odd it looked.