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This past weekend, Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che pointed out some double standards that exist with the Oscar’s chastising of Kevin Hart and the requirement that he apologize for his decades-old homophobic jokes, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Didn’t the Academy nominate Mel Gibson for an award just last year?” Che asked during his Weekend Update on SNL.
Gibson, notoriously spewed hateful anti-Semitic remarks during a DUI arrest in 2006. However, the Academy nominated him for best director Oscar for his 2017 war film “Hacksaw Ridge.”
Gibson, however, did apologize for those remarks.
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Che continued: “If Kevin Hart isn’t clean enough to host the Oscars then no black comic is,” Che said. “The only black comic I know that’s cleaner than Kevin Hart is booked for the next three to 10 years,” he said, referring to convicted rapist Bill Cosby.
Kevin Hart was back on center stage, feeling the love from his fans in Sydney, Australia after feeling the heat from an Oscar dust-up that sidelined his 2019 hosting gig because of insensitive jokes he made about gay people in the past, the NY Daily News reports.
Hart felt the pain over the past week as the fallout from his old tweets resurfaced on social media. According to him, Academy Awards officials demanded that he either apologize for the homophobic jokes or be removed from the running as host of the 2019 show.
READ MORE: Kevin Hart vs. Marc Lamont Hill: Black men losing big jobs for different reasons
Nick Cannon to the Rescue
Many felt like it was a missed opportunity for the comedian to use his platform for the greater good. But his friends like Nick Cannon came to Hart’s defense to highlight the hypocrisy when it comes to the off-color things white comedians say.
Cannon tweeted: “Interesting. I wonder if there was any backlash here…,” sharing a Chelsea Handler tweet from 2010 that said: “This is what a f– bird likes like when he flexes.”
He also spent his Friday scouring through Sarah Silverman’s tweets and found one from 2010, that read, “I don’t mean this in a hateful way but the new Bachelorette’s a f—-t.”
Cannon wrote, “And I f–king love Wreck It Ralph!!!” He also found a similar tweet from Amy Schumer.