Best Posts in Thread: Kevin Hart Discovered To Be Homophobic Five Years After We Tried To Tell You (Receipts Attached)

I’m not a big Kevin Hart fan. Not for awhile. I used to be, though. I’ve never met the guy but I used to be genuinely proud of him and his success. But then my admiration for him turned off like a light switch five years ago. Whatever. Many people still are, especially Black people.

So it’s not surprising that many of them immediately went to Hart’s defense once the so-called “Gay Mafia” started digging up his old homophobic tweets after it was announced that he would host the 2019 Academy Awards.

What is surprising is the hypocrisy in it.

If in an alternate universe, Kevin Hart were “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” comedian Kevin James and people found dozens of racists tweets from 2009-2013, I highly doubt these same Black people would be as defensive for someone “evolving” so slowly and viciously.

For those not aware of the kinds of things Hart tweeted in the past, here are some “comedy gems” from him:









His history of homophobic rhetoric on Twitter is so extensive that a journalist made a gif of the search that scrolls as long a dropped roll of toilet paper.



For all of you that are regular readers of the site, you may remember that in 2013, five years ago, I wrote an extensive essay on how homophobic many Black comedians were in general entitled, The Brunt of the Joke: Black Comedy & Homophobia. Here's an excerpt:

Black comedians, on the other hand, HATE gay people. They seem to despise them. True there are exceptions like The Wayans, Dave Chappelle and a few others. But for the most part, when you see “gay” depicted in black comedy it's seen as something disgusting, abnormal, hidden and kept on the “down low”. From Eddie Murphy to Martin Lawrence to The Kings of Comedy… Homosexuality is not made fun of like white comedians where it's seen as a “wink-wink” kind of thing. It's depicted as gross, disgusting and “Ewww, nigga you gay, get away from me.”

Take one of my favorite comedians, Kevin Hart. Watching his stand up comedy film, Let Me Explain, with a male date we initially laughed when Hart went into the “gay” section of his act. Very quickly it devolved into borderline abuse and homophobia.

Kevin Hart started the jokes with the statement, “One of my biggest fears is my son growing up and being gay.” Whoa. Okay, I initially thought he was going to go into a bit about his fearing the pressures his son would have to face from society for his sexuality. But that was all wishful thinking.

Nope, Kevin feared his son becoming a flaming faggot. Oh, he tried to cover himself by saying, “I’m not homophobic” but they all do that. That’s like when a racist says, “I’m not a racist” right before he tells a “black-man-is-a-spear-chucker” joke. Saying, “I’m not a rapist” right before you forcefully violate a woman doesn’t make it so.



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That was five years ago. And that essay didn’t even include the homophobic tweets, which are arguably worse than that stand-up comedy joke.

When asked about repeating the above homophobic joke and others in a 2015 Rolling Stone interview, Hart said:

“It’s about my fear. 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,” he said. “I wouldn’t tell that joke today, because when I said it, the times weren’t as sensitive as they are now. I think we love to make big deals out of things that aren’t necessarily big deals, because we can. These things become public spectacles. So why set yourself up for failure?”
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Really? How about saying, “I realized that my words and jokes were hurtful to some of my fans and my job is to make people laugh, not cry or feel bad about themselves.”

Nope. He blamed the audience for being “sensitive.”

Admittedly, times have definitely changed. The culture in general is more sensitive to racism, misogyny, homophobia, sexual assault and harassment, etc. But I would argue that isn’t a bad thing. I want to live in a world where bigots can’t hide behind “it’s comedy, relax” as an excuse to offend people who are different.

Even when the controversy of his old tweets came up, Hart seems to double-down on his dismissiveness about people’s reaction to his words saying, “Stop looking for reasons to be negative. If u want to search my history or my past and anger yourselves with what u find that is fine with me.”



Then, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences supposedly reached out to Hart and asked him to apologize for the old tweets, he defiantly chose to decline to apologize:

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Again, imagine if this were a Caucasian comedian referring to racists jokes and old tweets. Or another celebrity with 66 million Instagram followers referring to derogatory comments about women from 2009-2012. The woke folks on Black Twitter would have already created all kinds of memes and gifs destroying that person’s character.

Guess how many Black Twitter memes we’ve seen about Kevin Hart being homophobic so far?



As I said in the essay from 2013, it’s not about making comedy bland where no groups of people are teased or mocked. I wrote this back then to clarify:

Gay jokes can be funny. Really funny actually. As stereotypical as it was, the Men on Film sketches from In Living Color were really funny. And white stand up comedians like Louis C. K. and others make Gay jokes an art form.

The difference between white comedians and black comedians though is the obvious disdain and fear black men have for Gays. Seriously, black male comedians are very hateful to Gays in their comedy. There’s a very fine line walked in whats “just a joke” vs “I really hate these faggot mothafuckas.”

I recently watched the Comedy Central Roast of actor James Franco. It featured the likes of Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill, Andy Samberg (Saturday Night Live) and Bill Hader (Saturday Night Live) mocking James Franco for the ever flowing rumors of his sexuality. There were tons of Gay jokes. The difference here is that the gay jokes were vulgar yet not insulting in some weird way. Many of the white comedians seemed to low-key compliment Franco for being able to pull off Bisexuality with his stunning good looks. But the sheer number of Gay jokes became so overwhelming that Indian-American comedian Aziz Ansari had to comment:



Even still, the jokes weren’t super offensive. Many of the comedians mocked Franco’s rumored sexuality by insinuating that they themselves had been penetrated by and/or had performed oral sex on the delicious looking actor. Caucasian humor…you gotta love it. Very self deprecating and ironic.

Again, I can take a joke. Especially a gay joke that I can relate to…I’ve seen MANY straight white comedians make gay jokes where they imply they are gay themselves just for the sake comedy. That is totally fine. It’s seen as “white boy humor.” But this is a key point. Another observation I’ve made is the black comedians who primarily interact with white people seem to be less judgmental when it comes to homosexuality.

Take one of our favorite actor/rappers Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino). Before he landed his role on the NBC comedy Community, he performed as the sole Black American with the Derrick Comedy sketch comedy crew. Here’s one of their hilariously creative “gay -themed” sketches from 6 years ago spoofing the film “Memento”.



Dude! Hilarious (especially if you’ve seen the movie that they are spoofing).

Donald Glover’s character doesn’t purport to love engaging in a gay act, but you still don’t feel the weird disgusted aversion that the aforementioned black comedy actors display even merely pretending to slightly engage in gay intimacy.

So clearly I’m not accusing ALL black comedians of homophobia. But enough of them are that if I take a male date to a comedy club, It's a good chance that we’ll hear more than a few extremely homophobic gay jokes. Hell, we may even be singled out by the comedian on stage for being two attractive men sitting at a table alone together, sharing a basket of wings and fries.
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Again, this was five fuckin’ years ago. I tried to tell y’all.

But now, after flat out refusing to apologize…Kevin Hart has apologized for the old tweets and has stepped down from hosting the 2019 Academy Awards. Clearly this is a situation where Disney and ABC (the network which airs the Oscars) forced him out. Remember that ABC (owned by Disney) fired both James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy director) and Roseanne Barr for arguably far less offensive tweets. If not less offensive, at the least their tweets were less plentiful. So the writing was on the wall.

I can guarantee that we’ll STILL see tons of Black people defending Hart as a victim.

We’ll even see many Black Gay People defending Hart.

Gay people and their self-defense to bigotry ironically doesn’t matter to Black people. I’m still not even sure if Gay People in general matter to Black People at all.

This is why we had to publish a 2015 essay entitled, “If I’m Killed by the Police, Will My Black Gay Life Matter?”

Regardless, when all is said and done, we’re talking about the Oscars. This is an awards show that, just this year, saw the lowest ratings in the history of the telecast. More people went to see Kevin Hart in “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” and “Central Intelligence” than the number of people who watched the 2018 Academy Awards.

So maybe he’s right to double down on gay jokes. He clearly is doing just fine making “straight” movies where Dwayne Johnson is constantly cradling him in his muscular arms.

 

Most people, who are defending Kevin, are doing so under the guise that he has already apologized profusely for his tweets. The thinking is why should he have to keep apologizing for something he tweeted years ago. Let the main grow and move on. The problem I have with this train of thought is that I don't recall, nor can I find, a heart-felt APOLOGY for the offensive tweets. His apologies are half-hearted and accusatory to people he feels are being overly sensitive.

On a group chat with some friends of mine, a black and gay friend texted, "You know them white gays are ruthless. They got him booted." Even black gay people are pointing the finger at white gays instead of questioning the sincerity of Kevin's apologies. Sometimes I feel like black gay men have been so abused, we feel we have no choice but to stay with our abusers(black straight people) out of mere survival, much the way an abused woman will continue to stay with and make excuses for her abusive partner. Perhaps black gay men don't want to be viewed as traitors for joining with white people in attacking a successful black man. Personally, I don't find Kevin Hart funny and don't recall every shelling out money to see one of his films so I don't care much about the man as a comedian. I hope that this is a lesson to the black community that not everyone is going to partake in the offensive homophobia displayed by black comedians.

 

I'm disappointed. Dude could have easily gave a half ass apology and moved on...but naw...he wants to double down.

I agree folk are ridiculously over sensitive, whats often missed though in the conversation (not on this site) is the real disdain for MALE homosexuality.

 

See, that kind of writing above is what drew me to this site in the first place,@Nick Delmacy



That’s why in my status I joked about background checks. How the Oscar folk got blindsided by this is puzzling when you and others were already there with the printouts.

 

Meanwhile all these other "comics" combing through their accounts to clean the slick and hateful shit up There's Mississippi... Comedian... Who lives in Atlanta now from my hometown. He stays talking about gay people. Negro you in black gay central. Better shut your fat ass up. He was actually featured in Kevin's show.

Now today I'm sure Facebook is gonna be filled with straight black people boo hooing.

 

THIS!!! I had to respond to quite a few ppl on Facebook today when they repeated the #FakeNews that Kevin Hart had already apologized in the past. I replied to them, "Post the link to his original apology please." Their response, "I don't have a link, he said he apologized in his Instagram message."

NOT THE FUCKING SAME THING!

That's Trump level #FakeNews. I told them, "If he was a white man that posted racists tweets for YEARS then refused to apologize stating that he had already done so (without any proof of an apology), you would be flipping your shit!"

But because we're talking about "the gays," they take the man at his word. Mind you, a man who is an admitted liar and cheater in his marriage.

 

I'll preface my remarks by saying I never thought Kevin Hart was funny. He does what most black "comedians" do, play racial stereotypes for cheap laughs. Most black Americans lap that shit up like a cats do warm milk. I'm also not surprised Kevin Hart is homophobic. I'm surprised people are surprised. Most straight black people especially straight black men are homophobic by default. I consider them all to be anti-gay until proven otherwise. I guess I too am desensitized to hatred directly at non-heterosexual people especially from the black community.

 

But here's the thing. How about never saying anything that you would have to delete in the first place? LOL

As controversial as this site has been in the past, I would never have to delete anything if I got a big opportunity in Hollywood. Sure I've had biting opinions about shitty web series and feminine gay men, but I'm a gay man.That commentary was always me speaking on my experience and observations as a Black gay man. And I stand by every word.

But never at any point did I mock or ridicule fem gay men, nor did I use them as a "ewww, so gross" punchline.

The only thing that MAY be an issue is the infamous "gay voice" from a few podcasts, but that was a character and it wasn't even done in malice. Oh, there was also the one time I said that Drag Queens with all the makeup and big hair gave me the creeps like the clown from "IT." While still true to this day, in the moment I made a point to differentiate them from trans women and men, who I've always defended on the site.

 

apparently, nick cannon questions whether white comedians who have hosted major awards shows and made equally gross homophobic statements (examples below) have been held to a different standard. i do wonder if his counterpoint is the equivalent of when blk ppl, mostly men, deflect conversations about bill cosby by bringing up how differently problematic white male celebrities are handled. not sure where i land on this, but it is certainly an interesting addition cannon adds to the dialogue.



Nick Cannon Finds Old Homophobic Tweets From Comedians Amy Schumer, Chelsea Handler, and Sarah Silverman; Wants The Same Criticism For Them As Kevin Hart (Photos)

 

@RolandG man I've thought about this shit. Im tryna tell my bro @Nick Delmacy them gay folk will be like...

 

I think it's fair to say that people evolved or can, on whatever negative thinking they may had in the past. However I think that part of living in your truth is acknowleding your past, good or bad.

I think deleting the tweets looked worse than just owning up to it, saying he's progressed, and move forward.