Wanda Sykes Booed, Nick DiPaolo Takes Heat Too; Post Election Divisiveness Gets Ugly at Boston Charity Show

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Wanda Sykes drew loud boos from her hometown crowd Saturday night at the TD Garden, and Boston great Nick DiPaolo is taking heat now on social media for a pro-Trump, anti-liberal set that some are complaining was  offensive. The event was the 22nd annual Comics Come Home fundraiser at the TD Garden. Comics Come Home is the longest running stand-up comedy fundraiser in the nation and has raised over $7 million since its debut. The annual charity event brought out some of Boston’s best including Sykes, DiPaolo, Bill Burr, Robert Kelly, Jay Larson, Lenny Clarke and Wendy Liebman. Denis Leary hosted the event.

According to reports, the trouble started when Wanda joked about Trump being elected our next President. She told the crowd she had consoled an upset friend by saying that everything was going to be okay, because this can’t be the first time we elected a racist, sexist homophobic President. The material wasn’t that different from jokes Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock made on Saturday Night Live this weekend, but the TD crowd reacted angrily, and loudly, with a wall of booing. “Fuck you mother fuckers. All y’all” she told the crowd “The evidence is there,” she said over the jeers. “How can you say he’s not sexist, how can you say he’s not racist, how can you say he’s not homophobic. He said those things, dude.” Although some of the crowd started to cheer over the boos Wanda had enough and walked off stage giving the crowd the finger.

According to the Boston Globe, earlier in the night Denis Leary got a huge laugh for his anti-Trump jokes including one comparing Trump to a giant orangutan, leading some reports to say the crowd targeted Sykes because she is black, a woman, and a lesbian. Some fans captured video of Wanda taking heat.

Another Boston great, Nick DiPaolo followed Sykes on stage  and told the Boston Herald, that she took the wrong angle on stage. “She just kept digging a deeper hole for herself. It was making my blood boil,” he said. “You have to be funny first. Otherwise, it’s just preaching.” But Sykes isn’t the only one getting complaints about her material. DiPaolo is taking major heat on social media for his set Saturday night. Depending on who you ask, DiPaolo, either got huge cheers for his pro-Trump, anti-liberal set, or also got booed for his jokes. But regardless of what happened in the theater, DiPaolo is taking Twitter heat for some of his jokes. His set opened with “I’m a straight white guy and I’m ecstatic about how the election went,” had some heated language and at one point he referred to a woman in the audience as a “Peabody Jew.”  DiPaolo later said on Twitter that he is Pro-Israel and was just trying to get under people’s skin. Regardless of what happened in the theater, Twitter responses from DiPaolo himself, from fans at the TD Garden and those who just read about the incidents show a sharp divisiveness among comedy fans and a sensitivity that may have reached a new peak.

Denis Leary released a statement. “For 22 years, we have never censored any performer at Comics Come Home. This has resulted in the longest running stand up charity event in America. Even this past weekend, 6 of the 8 comics received big laughs and rapturous applause. As I say each time we do this concert, the Boston audiences are the best in the country and their support of The Cam Neely Foundation for Cancer Care has been absolutely exceptional. We look forward to Comics Come Home 23 next November.”

You can read some of the Twitter comments below.

https://twitter.com/CarlBrandt77/status/798058312361279488

https://twitter.com/JonathanFrank01/status/797831239709421568

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Interrobang Staff
Interrobang Staff