Those unemployed 32-year-olds who can’t catch a date, otherwise known as social media sleuths, claimed their latest scalp in the shaming of comedian Kevin Hart. Hart stepped down from his recently announced gig of hosting the Academy Awards after tweets with homophobic language and sentiments from a decade ago were unearthed and gawked at by the outrage brigade.
Whether anyone was actually offended is, as always, not relevant. Hart is out, and the Academy is left with one remaining candidate in Hollywood who has neither raped anyone (that disqualifies about half the town) nor offended anyone (that removes the other half): Clint Eastwood’s empty chair.
At least it doesn’t have tweets from a decade ago.
To be clear, not all social media discoveries are created equal. The inquiry into director James Gunn wasn’t just about pedophilic remarks he had said on Twitter, but rather rumors of Gunn’s alleged … child-friendly sexual proclivities. In Hart’s case, he said tone-deaf and hurtful things about LGBT people in the past, but he had already explained the recurring motif of fear of finding out his son is gay. In a 2015 interview, he admitted about his insecurities, not of any antipathy toward gays.
“It’s about my fear,” Hart told the Rolling Stone. “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. That’s the difference between bringing a joke across that’s well thought-out and saying something just to ruffle feathers.”
Obviously if Hart were still spewing anti-gay sentiment, the Academy shouldn’t have hired him in the first place. Seeing as Hart clearly matured on the issue, their ultimatum, that Hart either step down or issue a public apology, was absurd.
To host the Oscars is a thankless task. You must either put on an act so dead and woke that it puts the rapists and actresses to sleep, or actually perform some real comedy and face meaningless outrage.
Remember when the commentariat raged at Seth MacFarlane’s truly hysterical performance in 2013 for being “sexist?” As it turns out, he wasn’t publicly shivving women and sexuality, but instead the men in the industry who abuse them.
Think about a single comedian who would both entertain, genuinely, and take the gig. I’ll wait.
See you in January when that empty chair takes center stage.
