Roseanne Barr Defends Kevin Hart After Oscars Controversy

Jorge Arenas |

Jan 23, 2019

Following Kevin Hart stepping down from the Oscars after a number of gay jokes resurfaced, a number of comedians took to defend Kevin Hart. The latest comedian to come to Hart’s defense is none other than Roseanne Barr.

While en route to Israel, Barr spoke to the newspaper Israel Hayom via The Hollywood Reporter and took to Kevin Hart’s defense:

“Largely they’re digging up things that people did 15 and 20 years ago, and Kevin Hart, his statements were really old and people grow up and change, and he did say he was sorry over and over.”

Echoing Hart’s friend and co-star Nick Cannon, Barr defends Hart from what he said in the past, and how people should look at the comedian. But unlike him, she doesn’t go after the media’s own double standard when it comes to outrage. An outrage she knows all too well when Disney canned her wildly popular Roseanne reboot over a joke Tweet she made last summer.

Barr hasn’t been the only veteran female comedian to come to Hart’s defense. At the beginning of the new year, Ellen DeGeneres gave Hart a platform to apologize for his past actions on her daily talk show. There he spoke about self-reflection and she echoed those comments with the idea of forgiveness. But many on the internet weren’t having anything to do with that as she found herself in the crosshairs of activists who questioned everything from her commitment to gay right to her own loyalty to her community.

All of this comes as comedy seems to be shifting towards political correctness with even the raunchy animated comedy Family Guy announcing they plan to phase out jokes about the LGBT community.

What do you think of all of this? Is comedy heading in the wrong direction? Do you believe that icons such as Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, or George Carlon would be able to perform their sets today? Let me know in the comments below!