Imagine you paid money to see some stand-up comedy and the comedian was totally hilarious. He had this amazing bit about homosexuality where he said that gays are pussies for whining about bullying and that “Born This Way” was bullshit because kids learn to be gay from the media. What a crack-up! But it gets better. He went on to say that if his son was gay and came home talking all high-pitched and funny, he’d stab him to death with a knife! Stop, my sides, am I right? I mean, imagine it: stabbing your son with a knife because he’s a fag. LOL! The comedian then said he didn’t fucking care if he pissed gay people off because if they can take a fucking dick up their asses they can take a fucking joke. ROTFLMAO!!!!! Awesome, huh? Man, I wish this guy were my dad. Honestly, hearing antigay bullshit from a stand-up comedy stage is really not that shocking. Stand-up has a long and rather sordid history of homophobia. I did stand-up for years and I can’t even tell you how many jokes and bits and asides I heard at the expense of LGBT folks. Some of it was all in good fun. But most of it was not. The thing that makes the kind of rabidly homophobic comments coming from a stand-up comic shocking is that the comic in question isn’t some amateur driving his mom’s Mercury Sable to do a 20-minute set in Dayton, Ohio, for $25 in pizza coupons. This was Tracy “30 Rock” Morgan. Which leaves me asking, What in the hell was he thinking? Did he really mean it? Does he really feel so hateful toward gay people? Only Morgan knows for sure. But even if he was just speaking his true feelings from his heart, what for? I mean, he’s a national comedian doing stand-up comedy, which means that not only are his words very, very public, but they’re also supposed to be funny. Saying you’re going to stab your son to death if he’s gay is certainly not funny. But it certainly is something that’s going to get repeated. And, yeah, he pissed off gay people. And some people who aren’t gay, too. “Stand up comics may have the right to ‘work out’ their material in its ugliest and rawest form in front of an audience, but the violent imagery of Tracy’s rant was disturbing to me at a time when homophobic hate crimes continue to be a life-threatening issue for the GLBT community,” said Tina Fey, “30 Rock” executive producer and co-star. Even Chris Rock, who initially tweeted support for Morgan’s right to free speech, was disgusted when he learned what was said. “Wow I get it that shit wasn’t called for and I don’t support it at all,” Rock said. Morgan has issued an apology. Several, in fact.
“I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean it. I never want to use my comedy to hurt anyone,” he said in part. “Parents should support and love their kids no matter what. Gay people deserve the same right to be happy in this country as everyone else. Our laws should support that. I hope that my fans gay, straight, whatever, forgive and I hope my family forgives me for this.” “I hope for his sake that Tracy’s apology will be accepted as sincere by his gay and lesbian coworkers at ‘30 Rock,’ without whom Tracy would not have lines to say, clothes to wear, sets to stand on, scene partners to act with or a printed-out paycheck from accounting to put in his pocket,” said Fey. Not everyone is buying his apology. Unicorn Booty, the blog that broke the story, criticized Morgan for his “not-good-enough apology that he was shamed into making.” Is the apology good enough? I don’t know. I mean, it all sounds nice. It’s the exact right thing to say, I suppose. But it’s kind of hard to buy it, considering what he’s apologizing for saying. Yes, he has a right to say what he wants, but others have the right to give him hell for it. No joke. D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world, she reviews rock ’n’ roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister.