…I distinctly remember when the White House Correspondents Association decided not to have a comedian at next year’s dinner that I didn’t jump up and down and claim “censorship”. The President of the United States and his Press Secretary don’t have a sense of humour and took offense. The Correspondents Association decided to try to appease the administration and so no comedian next year. That situation is infinitely more disturbing and worrying than what happened to Kevin Hart. When media organizations make decisions based on “not wanting to upset the administration” then we all should pay closer attention.
Bigot and faggot are both still negative labels that we put on people that are different than ourselves.
False.
The first is a specific descriptor of harmful points of view and the behavior they inform.
The other is a hateful slur meant to dehumanize and degrade a person for something that harms nobody.
You may keep trying but it’s not going to work.
Which in addition is an attribute that they cannot control.
Y’know what, let’s entertain this for a moment.
How do I stop being a faggot?
As a man who very much enjoys it when Santa slides down my chimney, what options are there for me to stop being a faggot? No, seriously, how do I stop? Like, let’s say there’s a group of people who wants to use violent action to oppose all people they see as “faggots”*. What can I do to appease them, to make them stop going after me? The answer: “stop existing”. The only way they will stop coming after me is if I do not exist.
Now ask the same question about “bigot”. The answer is simple: stop being a bigot! You can choose not to say and do stupid, bigoted things! It’s not even that hard; most of us manage pretty damn well on a day-to-day basis. If Kevin Hart wanted to not be called a bigot, all he needed to do was apologize and admit that his previous bigoted statements were incredibly shitty. He refused. He decided to keep being a bigot.
This is, by the way, very similar to the fascist-antifascist distinction - if you want fascists to stop coming after you, you often have to stop existing; if you want antifascists to stop coming after you, you have to stop doing fascism. One of these is considerably easier than the other.
Saying “bigot and faggot are both negative labels” is cute; the same thing, hjowever, applies to “poopy-head” and “inhuman scum worthy only of extermination”. :mad: The 90s called, they wanted their crappy talking points back.
*(please note that those people are generally the main group of people who would use the term “faggot”; the only other group worth mentioning is LGBT men reclaiming the term á la Dan Savage)
I am a little bit surprised and admittedly a little bit grudginly respectful of Kevin Hart (who I feel in general is an overhyped, vain, talentless little piece of shit, someone who is truly human garbage, just probably not for the same reasons most here revile him) has not attempted to play the “Race Card” in this controversy, especially considering how many other white celebrities (Alec Baldwin, Jimmy Kimmel, Sarah Silverman, Kathy Griffin) are for the most part getting a seeming pass (in general public terms, not necc. from the Oscars people) for saying things every bit as loathesome, bigoted and hateful as anything Hart said, and in some cases much more recently.
Having recently heard the phrase “bigotry is intersexual”, do I dare contemplate what reasons other than “would consider himself a failure of a father if his son turned out gay” a person who isn’t bothered by that but is happy to see him “not playing the race card” might consider more relevant when it comes to reviling a black celebrity?
I am not sure, but it seems there is a nasty, racially charged insinuation buried in this post, one you are seemingly too cowardly to come out and openly say, but in my personal opinion A) The fact that Kevin Hart cheated on his pregnant wife marks him as a worse human being than the fact that he clearly looks down upon homosexuals, and when taken together, both of those facts tell me that Kevin Hart is a pretty ugly piece of work and B) I still think that had Hart pointed out the fact that many other prominent white celebrities have said equally vile things about homosexuals yet seem to have not been taken to task over it, (at least in comparison to how severely he was pilloried) and if he would have ascribed a racially motivated component to his treatment, he very well may have had a vaild point.
Ken Jeong was on Seth Meyers last week. He was basically pleading to host the Oscars.
Hey, why not?
(Good: Dr. Ken was an ABC show. ABC hates people from other networks. Bad: It’s been canceled.)
Boy do i hugely disagree with this. I can still be close friends with someone who has an affair. I cannot remain friends with someone who is a bigot.
Comedians are free to say whatever they want so there is no censorship. However, all people, including comedians, have to put up with the consequences of what they say. If the consequences are that some people decide not to hire him, how is that wrong?
I don’t think it’s censorship.
The Oscars are hurting enough as it is, ratings have gone down. They were criticized or boycotted one year for #OscarsSoWhite or something.
They don’t want their ratings to suffer more, after people were highlighting anti-gay comments he had made.
That is, indeed, a way that those words are similar. Now, can you think real hard and come up with any ways the two words are different?
One of them found the magic ring that turns you invisible and the other destroyed it?
Its also a pretty damn good fighter jet!
Playing a Korean War era video game is probably the last place where one can say “damn them fags!”.
Uh, wut? You do know that Polack jokes aren’t a thing anymore, right? No one is bigoted towards Polish people anymore. And kids figured out that Polack meant “Polish person.”
Those jokes exist because it was previously thought that Polish people, as yet another foreigner group, were stupid because they didn’t know English. It may have also been a proxy towards Russians. It was never about helping people laugh at themselves.
You appear to be the one who doesn’t understand how jokes work. You seem to think there is only one kind of joke. Sure, some jokes are just in fun. But jokes like the ones from Hart are the type that exaggerate real, uncomfortable things in a way to make them humorous.
No, I don’t think he’d beat up his kid for being gay. But it’s clear that he would be upset at his kid for being gay. Otherwise why would he even think about that? Someone who doesn’t care if their kid is gay isn’t going to make a joke about hurting them.
Had the joke been about killing his son for stealing a car, we wouldn’t think he’d actually kill his son. But we’d definitely think that he’d be mad at his son for stealing. It’s a thing for comics to “say what I was thinking!”
Jokes that punch down have historically been used to try and keep people in their place. Jokes that punch up have historically been used to help fight oppression. Neither are just in fun. Both are tactics used intentionally: The former are used by Nazis to try and recruit, presenting their bigotry as a joke. The latter is a common tactic by the left, especially against Trump.
And, here’s the thing: I doubt you really hold to this. It’s an excuse, because the people being attacked aren’t you. Do you really take jokes about killing off Republicans as being no big deal? I can’t remember if you are a Christian or an atheist. But what if someone jokes about killing those? What if people joked about wanting to kill white people?
Given what I know about you, I’m pretty sure you’d be among the first to call foul, as you should. But those groups aren’t any more special than gay people.
Finally, if you care about people, you shouldn’t dismiss their concerns as “looking to be offended.” Imagine you came up to me. You’re upset that you just wrecked your car, and you need to vent. And I tell you “stop looking to be offended.” Would you not assume it meant I didn’t care about you or your car?
I’m now imagining how right-wingers would respond to a comedy piece all about how they deserve to be beaten and maimed. Except I really don’t have to, because we saw the reaction to Kathy Griffith’s “beheaded Trump” stunt.
I don’t care who hosts the Oscars. I haven’t watched them in 10 years and wouldn’t watch them this year regardless of who hosts. Like 95% of Americans, I’ve been driven off by excessive length, lack of entertainment value, liberal political posturing, and major awards going to art-house movies that no one watches. So I don’t have strong feelings about the Oscars ditching Hart one way or the other, but it is an obvious example of hypocrisy.
Recent hosts have included: (1) Jimmy Kimmel, who poured out misogynist garbage for years on The Man Show and proudly refused to apologize for it. (2) Chris Rock, famous for punchlines such as “women cry rape because they want money” and “I like black people but I hate niggers”. (3) Seth MacFarlane, who once made a video about grinding homeless people into dog food, among a vast amount of other deliberately offensive garbage in his career. In these three cases, the Academy did not remove them from the hosting job, or demand that they apologize, or issue emergency press releases saying that the Academy doesn’t share the values expressed by blah blah blah. So why did they tell Hart to either apologize or be fired, if they were ok with Kimmel, Rock, and MacFarlane? The only obvious answer is Kimmel, Rock, and MacFarlane have strongly liberal politics and that’s a “get out of jail free” card for those who make their living being offensive.
Ellen wants Kevin to host the Oscars. She’s known him for years and having her support means a lot.
I respect Ellen. She’s a strong voice in the LGBT community and a very good comedian.
On the other hand, they’ve never let Jonathan Swift host after that “Modest Proposal” set he did.
Ironically, the most offensive material McFarlane has done was probably his Oscar stuff. “We saw your boobs”? Really?