On Tuesday, comedian Kevin Hart was announced to be the host for the 91st Academy Awards, but early this morning he said he was stepping down due to mounting pressure from people who called him homophobic for (in particular) one of his old 2010 standup routines in which he said he hoped his son didn’t grow up to be gay.
He apologized, after a fashion, and said he had grown and matured since he made his “jokes”, but then seemed to realize that the damage had already been done years earlier and the furor would likely only continue to grow.
What do you think?
Should he have fought to keep the gig or did he do the right thing by bowing out?
How is he being censored? He’s still allowed to say whatever he wants. That there are consequences for one’s actions isn’t censorship. I’ll add that it’s a private organization, not the government, that is taking the action.
I’m being general, rather than specifically about Kevin Hart. Too many people’s lives are being derailed because somebody somewhere didn’t like what they said once. Well, fuck em. They can like or dislike whatever they want, that’s their business, but that shouldn’t give them the right to end somebody’s career over it.
Jokes, if they work as jokes, are allowed to be offensive. I have my own limits on what I like, but I don’t think anything should be completely off the table. Context matters. Their careers should be based on general audience popularity, not on a single individual’s personal tastes.
His career isn’t over. The Academy made what is essentially a business decision. He had the chance to sincerely apologize. If you very publicly disparage an entire group of people by saying that they’re so disgusting that he wouldn’t want their son to be one of them, it’s reasonable for them to not be hired by an organization that has many people in that group as members.
My bad. I thought this entire thread was about Kevin Hart based on its title and the content of the OP.
Ok, I’ll play. It’s reasonable for me not to hire someone who offends me. It’s reasonable for lots of people not to hire someone that they find offensive. It’s reasonable for a company not to hire someone as the face of their organization because lots of people find them offensive.
It’s reasonable to not hire someone if they do something wrong, illegal, harmful, abusive, or dangerous. It’s not reasonable to not hire someone because they once did something somebody didn’t like.
This smacks of another ‘political correctness’ thread.
Yes, Hart has a right to say what he wants, offensive or not. But he does not have the right to be free of the consequences of his words and actions. When you speak, you chance that your words will have consequences. In this case, one of the consequences is losing a gig. Fine. It happens.
But one shouldn’t paint this as some form of censorship. So-called ‘edgy’ comedians get hung on this sort of thing all the time. It’s the chance they take.
Cries of ‘let him speak’ or ‘political correctness’ - which I realize hasn’t popped up here yet - are really just calls for a ‘safe space’ for the offensive to be free from consequences. Just as much as college kids wishing for such on campus, they’re a bit silly. The difference is, on college campuses it’s waterhead kids without experience while in the wider world it’s grown-ass adults who should already have learned that words and actions have consequences.
It’s entirely his own fault. People got upset after finding his old stuff, demanding an apology. The Oscars told him he’d need to apologize to do the show. He refused, saying he’d already aapologized, and that you have to move on at some point. And so they didn’t keep him. He faced a lot of backlash, and suddenly he was okay with apologizing.
There is no ongoing problem All he needed was an apology, which is something you should give as a matter of course if you truly regret your actions. That shows we are willing to forgive.
Once again, someone who was sorry for their tweets didn’t delete them. People need to get through their heads that, if you no longer agree with something you said on Twitter under your real name, and you are going out for any type of public-facing job, delete those tweets. Every famous person should have done that by now. Hire someone to do it, even.
And screw the censorship claims. You aren’t being censored. You’re being held to what you said, if you don’t delete or apologize. Having to stand by or repudiate your words is a good thing.
And then people can decide if they want to do business with you based on what you stand for.
The only good recent host was McFarlane. It’s a shit gig anyway. They had trouble getting a host and I doubt that’ll work get easier now, so contarary to what some poster said, it’s not a business decision, its Hart deciding its more trouble than its worth
They should (as one suggestion I read) ask Siri or Alexa to host. Hard to see people getting offended there.
Hart jumped. The Academy did not want him to go. They wanted him to apologise and move on. He felt he did not have to.
I repeat, they had a lot of trouble finding a host. Not going to get better after this.
This is my problem. Something from the past that they already have apologised for, atoned for, learned from, changed over, and have grown up into a better person since, gets unearthed again, presented without proper context, just so they can be “offended” by it all over again, is not forgiveness. It’s vindictive.
Somebody not liking something you said or did in your past is not a good reason to mess up somebody’s opportunities. It’s not being fair. Life is about learning and growing. Is it fair if I was judged only by a single harmless incident I committed thirty years ago, and not by everything I have done since? And I mean expressing an opinion, a point of view, not murder or abuse; something I would never say now.
It scares me how the offenderati are ruling how we can behave now, like we should be superhumanly perfect people throughout our entire lives, no amount of growth being good enough to make up that one naughty thing we once did.
Hart is free to tell all the (barely even) jokes about Gay Panic that he wants all the live long day. He is also free to accept the consequences that some people aren’t going to hire him based on that material. Especially, you know, the freaking Oscars, which has a fair number of gay members. These decisions are made all the time and never even get to this level because someone did their homework first, instead of missing things like this and then having to backtrack. Hence the “censorship” of Andrew Dice Clay not getting to host the Oscars every year 1988-present.
I completely agree with this I don’t even like Kevin Hart, I think his stand-up material sucks and he isn’t even remotely funny (to me).
At the end of the day, the Oscars can hire or not hire/fire anyone they choose and Kevin isn’t being censored. But I can see his point of view. We’re talking about comments he made many years ago, has already apologized for, grew out of the experience, and now behaves differently with understanding of the harm he was previously causing. Yet some group of internet assholes unearth the original comments and make a fuss loud enough that the Academy wants an apology and now he has to go through it all again. I think if he really wanted the gig hosting, he could have addressed this differently but how many times does one have to do so? Next time he is booked for a comedy show in Anytown, USA does he have to do it again because someone went out again and surfaced the same past comments and complains to the theater owner? 2 years from now if he gets a new sit-com, does he have to do it AGAIN when a new group of bored internet losers digs up past comments and goes online and starts another outrage targeting NBC, ABC, CBS, etc.? It’s just ridiculous and absurd. I can completely understand his initial reaction.