See, thats the real story.
He just wants to have his son grow up and get a respectable job like a lawyer or doctor or such…unlike his dad…
The difference is he’s Bill Cosby. Never once do you sense that he actually means it or would actually harm one of his kids. Morgan has a completely different persona.
That said, I’ll say again that it would be a lot more open and shut one way or the other if footage was released. And again, it’d be interesting to know if it was a callback; you could take bits and pieces of any comedians set and spin it.
Since the guy who tweeted this was neither a kid nor out to his family I would guess he’s not as hypersensitive as, say, a 21 year old out-and-proud-and-loud college activist type.
Absolutely the funniest post in this thread so far.
The trick is you have to tell anti-racist racial jokes.
Chris Rock is one modern comedian I can think of who does this, but there are others and it’s an old conceit: if you want to say something really offensive, put it through the lips of another character. Quote your misogynist uncle, or your friend or cousin or in-law, but that way it launders the worst parts. (Rock does it for example when talking about an uncle [no idea if he really exists] who’s super racist against white people but has a white wife.)
Tracy Morgan is still apologizing. (I didn’t see this link earlier; my apologies if others have already seen it). Honestly, this is the best apology I’ve seen from someone getting caught for saying stupid shit.
Regardless of whether Daniel Tosh means what he says, the difference between a lot of Tosh’s routines and Tracy’s comments is that Tosh is funny. Really funny. As eclectic wench said above, if you’ve got offensive ratcheted up, you need the funny to be even more to compensate for it. We can pretty much forgive anything that’s said if it makes us laugh, even if we hate ourselves for laughing at it. Tracy? Not funny and so the offensiveness just sits there all non-compensated.
Let’s merge Tracy and Bill Cosby together.
My son “better talk to me like a man and not in a gay voice or I’ll pull out a bazooka and blow that little nigger to death.” That? Funny. Bazookas are an automatic 6 out of 10 on the funny meter. Bazookas at Camp Kookamunga in Walla Walla, Washington? 8 out of ten.
Stabbing your son? Not so funny. And so we get offended.
Cosby’s story was about his mom telling him his Dad wanted to use unrealistic, cartoon levels of violence. Morgan was making realistic threats against his son.
Part of much of these types of humor is the dissonance. The more the line seems like something real that the person means, the less funny it is.
It does seem a lot better than the typical public figure “I’m sorry if you were offended” type apology. I give him credit for directly admitting that he was wrong and not trying to justify his earlier remarks or make it seem like he was misunderstood.
Excerpt:
Tracy Morgan can not be forgiven. The cutest girl in the 6th grade was named Tracy Morgan, and ever since this jerk showed up with the same name my memories have been spoiled. I hope he rots in hell. What was the gay rant thing about?
Also sounds like something written by professional writers and checked over by legal and suits. Morgan’s paycheck signer, CEO of NBC Entertainment Bob Greenblatt, is openly gay which probably also adds some gravity to the charges. Still, I’m guessing when he heard “30 Rock Star Causes Controversy With Rant” I’m guessing the first words through his mind were “WTF has Baldwin said now?”
I am a huge non-fan of the man - but I respect what he said in his apology.
“He better talk to me like a man and not in a black voice or I’ll pull out a knife and stab that little nigger to death.”
It’s bizarre, but consistent.
Is this in reference to the latest apology from Tracy Morgan, the one linked to by LHoD?
In my experience with these sorts of conversations about celebrity apologies, I have reached the conclusion that it is impossible to deliver an apology which sounds “genuine” to most people. Perhaps some of this is in the oddness of the practice of quickly apologizing in the first place; what is it to be sorry about something, if one has just intentionally done that thing? Is it possible to be filled with genuine regret so soon? I think sometimes the skepticism towards whether apologies are worded plausibly or not comes more from unconscious skepticism as to the very possibility of such a quick change of heart, rather than any actual deficiency in the wording itself.
[Of course, it’s also true that often apologies are crafted with all kinds of PR-speak, but this latest one from Tracy Morgan does not seem to me that way (or, rather, only seems to me that way for a few very small parts out of the whole)…]
I suspect it is, and frankly I consider that a good sign. An arrogant sonofabitch would be likely to give one of those “Lighten up, Francis” non-apologies we’re all familiar with. A slightly less arrogant sonofabitch who was genuinely afraid for his job would get some PR people to craft a “I’m sorry you were offended” non-apology that threw a few bones to the PC crowd but still saved face for him. A person who was genuinely contrite at having said some stupid shit, and who might lose his job over his words, and who had a PR team at his beck and call, would be an idiot NOT to call them in to vet what he was going to say.
Checked over by PR, absolutely. Genuine? It sounds more genuine to me than other checked-over-by-PR apologies have been.
Nope. You assume people might think so, I assume you might think so - based on what you said.
Back off.
I concur, which was why I was curious about Sampiro’s remark. You make good points about the utility of PR vetting, as well. If I had just said some stupid shit without intending to say stupid shit, I would definitely call in professionals whose job it was to check over whether the shit I was saying was stupid before I started saying anything about the stupid shit I had just said, as a well-meaning safeguard against the tendency I would now be aware of of mine to say stupid shit…
This difference, if I remember correctly, is that Bill Cosby did not threaten the children.
‘His father’ said “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out. Make another one just like you.”
‘His wife’ "announce the beatings would commence by saying ‘I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!’ "
‘His daughters’ threatened his son’s life for leaving the toilet seat up.
That would not surprise me at all. I have no idea whether Morgan’s apology was sincere, but plenty of public figures with the same types of resources have gone with “I’m sorry if you were offended” type apologies and not actually said “I was wrong.” So *someone *did a better job than usual here.
Even if Morgan was just saying what he’d been told he’d damn well better say if he values his job, it’s possible that an apology like this might make others think a little more seriously about anti-gay humor. Not that I think it will make a big difference, or any difference at all to anyone who’s truly homophobic, but it might at least cut down on the attempts to defend Morgan’s earlier statements as “just jokes”.
Sounds to me like Morgan made what he thought was a joke (hence it being intentional at the time), but it simply bombed horrifically to a degree he didn’t expect, and he’s genuinely apologetic for the tone-deafness.
I am sure the good people at 30 Rock are pissed off as hell.
You only need to see what happened to Jodie Foster’s film “The Beaver” with Mel Gibson (raked in less than $1 million total boxoffice) to see how one bigoted, homophobic asshole can ruin an entire production.
My guess is that Tina Fey is frantically writing a script now to try to make up for this PR fiasco and, in the first episode this Fall, you will see Tracy performing at a Gay bar, in drag, with his 35 best Gay friends posse.