“Interesting.”
Nick Cannon suggested on Saturday that outrage over fellow black actor and comedian Kevin Hart’s old homophobic tweets was unfair.
Pointing to years-old tweets in which white female comedians used the words “fag” or “faggot,” he tweeted, “Interesting,” with a contemplative emoticon, “I wonder if there was any backlash here…”
Cannon, who has hosted MTV’s “Wild’n Out” and NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” first called out Chelsea Handler for a 2010 post.
Interesting樂 I wonder if there was any backlash here… https://t.co/0TlNvgYeIj
— Nick Cannon (@NickCannon) December 8, 2018
Next up was a Sarah Silverman tweet from a month earlier. Cannon did give the actress a nod for her voice work in an animated Disney movie.
And I fucking love Wreck it Ralph!!! 臘♂️ https://t.co/6cHA1EQEkg
— Nick Cannon (@NickCannon) December 8, 2018
Finally, Cannon cited an Amy Schumer missive from 2012, warning that he could continue the shame game.
樂 I’m just saying… should we keep going??? https://t.co/1kESA82WqR
— Nick Cannon (@NickCannon) December 8, 2018
It was unclear whether Cannon, who is a friend of Hart, was calling for more outrage or less, but Twitter unsurprisingly went with the former option. The female comedian’s tweets subsequently attracted a wave of criticism. There were a lot of Kevin Hart memes.
— Steve (@HollywoodBall) December 8, 2018
Although he did not say so explicitly, Cannon was apparently defending Hart over his years-old tweets that resurfaced last week, in which the “Night School” and “Jumanji” actor expressed anti-gay sentiments and repeatedly used the words “fag” and “homo.”
After seeing this @benfraserlee tweet, I did a search for every time Kevin Hart tweeted “fag,” “homo,” or “gay.” It was…a lot. And he seems to have basically stopped tweeting those words after 2011 — i.e. the year his first stand-up movie became a hit. https://t.co/P8nTOilFgx pic.twitter.com/6uzPhnvt4F
— Adam B. Vary (@adambvary) December 5, 2018
In a defensive Instagram post on Thursday, Hart said he would no longer host the 2019 Academy Awards. He notably did not apologize.
However, hours later, Hart went ahead and said sorry.
I have made the choice to step down from hosting this year’s Oscar’s….this is because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists. I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past.
— Kevin Hart (@KevinHart4real) December 7, 2018
Some saw Hart as the victim of a culture of out-of-control political correctness, while others predictably supported the public shaming of such behavior, or even called for further punishment.
GLAAD, a leading gay rights organization, found a middle ground, saying that Hart “shouldn’t have stepped down as host of the Oscars, but instead “stepped up” and taken responsibility for his past expressions of prejudice.
Many news outlets labeled treated Handler, Silverman, and Schumer’s tweets as morally equivalent to to Hart’s, deeming them all “homophobic.”
To be fair, though, the female comedians were pretty clear using the anti-gay slurs ironically. Hart, on the other hand, actually seems to have some issues with gay people, which he has expressed in his stand-up comedy.
In a bit he did in 2010, Hart said: “One of my biggest fears is my son growing up and being gay. That’s a fear. Keep in mind, I’m not homophobic. … Be happy. Do what you want to do. But me, as a heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being gay, I will.”
In a 2015 Rolling Stone interview dug up by Reason, Hart defended the joke.
“It’s about my fear. I’m thinking about what I did as a dad, did I do something wrong, and if I did, what was it? Not that I’m not gonna love my son or think about him any differently. The funny thing within that joke is it’s me getting mad at my son because of my own insecurities — I panicked. It has nothing to do with him, it’s about me,” he said.
Still, he added: “I wouldn’t tell that joke today, because when I said it, the times weren’t as sensitive as they are now. I think we love to make big deals out of things that aren’t necessarily big deals, because we can. These things become public spectacles. So why set yourself up for failure?”
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