OPINION:
Good news for my fellow gay men: We’re oppressed again. For years gay men have slipped out of favor in the lesbian-dominated, transgender-obsessed LGBT lobby — with left-wing media declaring white gay men as naturally evil as our straight counterparts — but fake outrage generated on social media last week seems to have temporarily welcomed us back into the golden shackles of professional victimhood.
In case you missed it, as Americans geared up to not watch the Oscars again this year, left-wing journalists switched into cannibal mode and successfully took down this year’s host, anti-Trump comedian Kevin Hart, after 10-year-old tweets deemed “homophobic” surfaced. At first Mr. Hart, rather gallantly, refused to apologize and posted a series of heartfelt videos to social media decrying outrage culture and assuring everyone he was not, in fact, homophobic, an assertion he’s reiterated many times over the years, including in a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone.
But the fragile gay activists howled louder and Mr. Hart finally gave in, publicly flogged himself on Twitter, apologized, and stepped down from the hosting gig. But for pampered activists and Ivy League-educated journalists mean words remain tantamount to the greatest horrors of human history, and apologies are meaningless. The Washington Post wasted no time comparing the homophobic tweet from Mr. Hart, a black man, to slavery. “Instead of leaving Confederate statues up, the equivalent of Hart leaving his homophobic tweets intact, we take them down or recontextualize them,” columnist Alyssa Rosenberg wrote, referring to Mr. Hart as an “adult offender” in the criminal speech system.
“What constitutes a proper apology and restitution for hurtful words?” Ms. Rosenberg asked. “And who gets to rule on whether those gestures of contrition are sincere and commensurate to the offense?”
Let me break it to the left: Mr. Hart’s coerced apology, in which he said he’s “evolving” on this issue, had all the sincerity of a kneeling prisoner in an ISIS beheading video. Invigorated by the scent of homophobia in the water, liberals weren’t finished. Less than 48 hours later, as he celebrated the biggest accomplishment of his young life, reporters uncovered tweets from Heisman trophy winner Kyler Murray, in which he used homophobic slurs on Twitter in messages teasing his buddies. He was 14 years old at the time. Mr. Murray, like Mr. Hart, groveled and apologized to the gay bullies, and joined a long list of black athletes forced to do the same in recent years.
I’m astounded Americans aren’t more homophobic, considering if all gay people were the emotionally feeble dictators the media portrays us as, how could anyone not hate us? And yet, the U.S. remains the best and most tolerant place for gay people on Earth. It didn’t elude me the left seems to have a particular lust for castrating black men for homophobia, while turning a blind eye to others in their camp.
Actor and TV host Nick Cannon seemed to notice the same. “We with you regardless!!!,” he wrote to Mr. Hart on Twitter, “You know we feel about people trying to control us anyway!!” He then shared old tweets from feminist comedians Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman and Chelsea Handler that all used the same language as Mr. Hart and received no backlash.
Alec Baldwin, Jonah Hill, Bette Midler, Eminem, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Joy Reid are just a handful of other celebrities who’ve said or done far worse than Mr. Hart recently and all to the deafening silence of media, the gay lobby and the progressive left.
On Monday, in response to her old tweets, Miss Silverman vowed to never use the “f” word again, and shared a series of tweets from gay rights activist Greg Hogben in her defense, who explained that gay men knew all these white liberals were joking, but where Mr. Hart’s tweet was concerned, “I can feel the violence. I can feel the malicious intent.” Gay comedian Billy Eichner went a step further, saying the word should be banned altogether, even thought among gay people the “f” word is a term of endearment. (Also, it’s just a funny word.)
Bryan Sharpe, an Internet personality who went viral this year in a prank video where he convinced a Starbucks employee to give him a “reparations” discount, says it all comes down to the political left seeing black masculinity as a threat.
“Black men are taking a back seat. You see articles online saying ’black men are the white people of black people,’” Mr. Sharpe told me. “Their whole black, leftwing, mainstream push has been to attack the masculinity of the black male. We said the gay agenda was coming and it’s here now, we saw it with the Kevin Hart thing, the people in charge are gay and they’re bullying people because they have the power.”
During a stand-up routine in 2011, comedian Tracy Morgan made a nearly identical joke that sunk Mr. Hart. A thin-skinned gay man in the audience ran to local media and Mr. Morgan was forced to align himself with a gay lobbying group and go on an apology tour, nearly losing his star role in a hit sitcom. Six years later, Dave Chappelle came under assault for jokes he made about transgenders during a Netflix special. In a surprise move, Mr. Chappelle refused to apologize and the kerfuffle soon went away.
Perhaps Mr. Hart last week initially was inspired by that comedic icon’s resilience, only to later cave under the pressure. Little did he know, transgender jokes weren’t the most shocking thing Mr. Chappelle has said since his return to Hollywood. While hosting Saturday Night Live and delivering an 11-minute monologue, Mr. Chappelle committed the ultimate blasphemy. “I’m wishing Donald Trump luck. And I’m going to give him a chance,” he said. For that, he did issue an apology.
• Chadwick Moore is a New York-based journalist and political commentator focusing on trade, free speech and media accountability. He is currently working on his first book.
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