It took less than 48 hours for the SJW woke police to successfully oust black comedian Kevin Hart from the career opportunity of a lifetime as the 2019 Oscars host over past jokes that offended the LGBT community. Now that they’ve taken their scalp, leftists have joined in a collective dance.
Hart stepped down from hosting the Oscars on Thursday night after several old tweets and jokes resurfaced that were not exactly politically correct regarding the LGBT community, most of them revolving around his fear about his son becoming gay. As the backlash online mounted, the Academy demanded that Hart publicly apologize or face firing; hours later, he declined that apology and announced he would be stepping down.
“I chose to pass. I passed on the apology,” said Hart in an Instagram video. “The reason why I passed is because I’ve addressed this several times. This is not the first time this has come up. I’ve addressed it. I’ve spoken on it. I’ve said where the rights and wrongs were. I’ve said who I am now versus who I was then. I’ve done it. I’ve done it. I’m not going to continue to go back and tap into the days of old when I moved on. I’m in a completely different space in my life.”
Over at Variety, film critic Owen Gleiberman said that Kevin Hart was “the wrong choice” to host this year’s Oscars because movies are about empathy; Hart’s jokes, apparently, have none of that.
“The trouble with Kevin Hart’s words— the reason that, by and large, they’re terrible jokes — is that they express a spirit of extreme anti-empathy,” said Gleiberman. “They’re not just ‘cheap gags.’ They’re overtly hostile and parochial; they basically demonize LGBTQ identifying people as The Other.”
The blue checkmark mob on Twitter said that Hart’s jokes were not only offensive but a product of warped mind regarding LGBTQ people.
LGBT writer Jill Gutowitz tweeted: “If you think LGBTQ people reacted too strongly to Kevin Hart, here’s why: It’s not that his jokes were unforgivable, but these are the kind of ubiquitous jabs that kept me and so many queer people in the closet for years. They’re not jokes—they’re beliefs. He opened a wound.”
LGBT advocate Amanda Jette Knox similarly tweeted: “The amount of straight people on Twitter telling gay folks to stop being offended over Kevin Hart’s old homophobic jokes/tweets is unbelievable. Maybe he’s grown & changed. Who knows? But I do know it’s not okay to tell us how to feel about discrimination.”
While GLAAD did not expressly celebrate Hart stepping down, the LGBT activist organization said he should have used his hosting gig to make advance the cause of tolerance.
“Kevin Hart shouldn’t have stepped down; he should have stepped up,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. “Hart’s apology to LGBTQ people is an important step forward, but he missed a real opportunity to use his platform and the Oscars stage to build unity and awareness. We would still welcome that conversation with him. The Academy has recently made significant strides in featuring diverse talent onstage and they should now double down on that commitment as they look for a new host.”
Translation: Hart can only host the Oscars if he marches to the LGBTQ community’s approved script.