Much has been made about Dave Chappelle's "meltdown" last night, but when you look at video of the event, it doesn't look very meltdown-y at all. Looks to me like he walked offstage, apparently disgusted with a rowdy crowd that kept yelling at him to do bits from his Comedy Central TV Show.

Today, the Vulture published a very interesting interview with New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman, who is the author of an e-book about Chappelle. Zinoman suggests that walking away is part of Chappelle's character:

I was less surprised, because with Chappelle, what's past is prologue. In 2011 in Miami, he got upset over filming in the audience, stopped telling jokes, checked his phone. That led to boos. The next show went smoothly. The difference is that his new tour has received a lot of attention, so this is much more high profile. But since he became famous, Chappelle has a very striking, occasionally tense relationship with his audience. Recall that his stated reason for leaving Chappelle’s Show was that he didn’t like the sound of a laugh by a white member in his crew. Most comics like all laughs. In this case, Chappelle discriminates between good ones and troubling ones. Of course, he was understandably concerned that white audiences took his racial material the wrong way. But Chappelle has a longer history of wariness toward his crowd.

So what do you think?