Louis C.K.: Did Gays Lose An Opportunity By Attacking Tracy Morgan’s “Stab My Gay Son” Joke?
- Comedian Louis C.K. questions the gay community’s response to Tracy Morgan’s stand-up routine in which he said he would stab his gay son.
Image via Spc. Elayseah Woodard-Hinton
Talk about closing ranks.
If Tracy had made himself, the speaker, the butt of his jokes then that
might have had a point. But he didn’t. The joke was about how he would stab a gay child, because of how disgusting gays are.
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Honestly, I thought Tracey Morgan’s “Stab my gay son” joke was funny. I think Louis Ck is funny. I think that when we try and make comedians or comedy too serious, if we make them defend every word that comes out of their mouth, the artform loses it’s edge.
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@Dustin There was no joke there in Tracey’s comments. Where was the joke, wit, humor? Even Tracey himself wasn’t able to identify any sort of joke in it. Being on a comedy stage does not automatically mean a person isn’t serious about the ideas they are putting out there. Comedians, even the ones who actually are funny and have jokes instead of hate rants, are often serious about the ideas they are delivering through stand up and audiences understand that.
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Gosh. We should have thought of that! The Gay Hive-Mind should have approached Tracy Morgan directly and demanded he tell us what his dad was like!
WTF? A comedian says something really really STUPID and hateful, and the gay community is supposed to do a Barbara Walters-style interview with him? Is there even a means in place to do something like that? NO!
Normally I like Louis C.K, but this is a really moronic response. The good news is that between the stupid rapper “defending” him and now this, Tracy Morgan’s tirade isn’t going away.
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@Owen: Who cares if Louis is nice? He didn’t give any actual explanations or arguments. All Louis did here was blame gays for not bending over backwards to understand Tracey (never mind Tracey being the one to attack us and Tracey being a public figure who should try to understand a group before speaking about them) and insult the gay people who were there and said the anti-gay speech was given as an angry statement of belief not like humor.
Comedian Whoopi Goldberg says Mel Gibson isn’t racist because he hasn’t been racist to her personally and Roman Polanski drugging a 13 year old for non-consensual wasn’t “rape rape”. As far as I know Whoopi is a nice enough person generally, but that doesn’t mean she’s correct or that she isn’t shoveling bullshit just to stick with other comedians and celebrities.
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@rrr, I’m not saying all jokes are for everyone, I’m saying we can’t allow ourselves to upset by everything that is said in jest. I was no in the audience for the rant, but I did read the transcript, and I am just saying that if I had been there, I would have thought it was funny. I even went back and reread it just to be sure.
Besides, aren’t there people that deserve our anger a lot more than Tracey Morgan?
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@Dustin: There’s no sign it was said in jest. The guy who reported said it was done in a serious, angry way. And where is the joke? Gays aren’t born gay, if my son said he was gay I’d stab him, etc. People aren’t all going to appreciate the same jokes, but if a joke is present it can be identified at least. Tell me where were the jokes? What’s funny about the rant? What’s the brand of humor? If that was said by someone other than Tracey Morgan (who you must be a big fan of) would you see those as jokes or claim they were funny? He wasn’t doing a parody act. Even he wasn’t able to identify a joke himself, he just wept afterwards when he was in career trouble and said he has issues with homosexuality because of his dad which made it all the clearer that the rant was said seriously.
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@Dustin. I wasn’t there either but I too read the transcript. Sorry but I did not even crack a smile. What do you find funny about this anti-gay rant? No jokes could be found anywhere in the transcript as far as I could see.
It is obvious that this guy was somehow lashing out and these were his true beliefs and feelings. The lame apology after the shit hits the fan is just that, lame. You don’t beak off like he did for a few minutes without thinking about what you are going to say first and even rehearsing it a bit.
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@rrr I’m not really a fan of Tracey Morgan. I like him fine. I think he’s funny. When I first read the rant, it looked a lot like satire to me, so I have always looked at it as satire. I feel like the apology was more insulting than the bit was. But that isn’t my point. my point is (and has always been) that it really doesn’t matter. Tracey Morgan said something that was either interpreted badly, or was bad, or whatever. He’s an entertainer. He’s not that important. Hounding for what he said, being mad at Louis CK (who I am a fan of, BTW, Chewed Up is BRILLIANT) because he suggested a different response than anger, dragging Whoopi Goldberg (who is a national treasure) into it, all of that is silly. let it go.
Rick Santorum wants to outlaw our existence. We have bigger fish to fry.
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It’s not our job to figure out why Tracy said what he said. Do we go around asking every bigot and racist what happened to them in their childhood to make them say fucked up shit? No, and who cares? It’s up to each and everyone of us to take responsibility for the things we say or do.
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@Jollysocks: Let’s not pretend that people like Charles Rozier are racist because of child abuse. Child abuse makes people angry at the sex of the parent that abused them, MAYBE. It makes them angry at the race of the parent if they’re of a different race, MAYBE. It can do that sort of thing. It doesn’t give people an excuse to hate people who have nothing to do with their parents.
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So, wait. Tracey Morgan is completely backward and ignorant, and advertises killing gay people. LAWL. Dat’s so funnie. So now I have questions: Should I ask Michael Richards what made him go off on a hugely racist rant and bury his career? How about Todd Jones? Should we ask him what makes him a homophobic clown? No, we don’t have to ask. That’s purely ignorant, and ignorance shouldn’t be shrugged off, it should be attacked. “He’s an entertainer, he’s not that important,” is a flawed statement, since his point of view tends to get out into the world more than that of the regular people. We owe him nothing. And Louis, no. We didn’t miss any opportunity. It’s not humorous. This reminds me of Donna Summer nuking her fan base by opening her mouth. This guy here just did the same thing. And I’m not interested in dialoguing with an idiot. Don’t even bring Santorum into this. The article is not about him. It’s about a fairly talented comedian attempting to justify stupidity from one that isn’t.
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Louis CK is not a racist, he’s a realist existing in the real world. Those of us with skin too thin to appreciate comedy need to go elsewhere for our entertainment—like Canada, or France, where you can’t even say the word “fag” without being thrown in jail. So I can’t help but wonder, why is it you guys love Tracy Morgan until he shows his true colors?
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@missanthrope: Who’s “we”? You’re a straight woman, aren’t you, you little pre-op?
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@Libertarian Larry: You said racist. Did you mean to say homophobe?
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@missanthrope: I didn’t ask about your op status (I know you’re a pre-op), Charles, I asked whether you’re a straight woman. I don’t think you’d ever let a man come on your chest unless you had the body of a woman, which makes you T but not LGB.
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Yes, we did pass over an opportunity. Morgna’s unfunny rant was brought into the national spotlight. Major gay organizations could have turned it into a positive by creating a conversation after condemning him.
But, then, what good is diplomacy in this day and age. No one cares. Everyone wants to be right and have everyone else agree with them, because, you know, that’s how progress and in-roads are made.
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I like Louis CK and in fact I’m watching him on TV while typing this. He’s thoughtful and intelligent and there’s depth to his routines and I think sparking discourse is always good. But he’s wrong, and being naive here and this is coming strictly from straight privilege and the same double standard we keep hearing. Why was this the gay community’s (whatever the hell that means) opportunity to lose? No one would say B’nai Brith or the NAACP lost an ‘opportunity’ every time some bigot spouts nonsense.
It’s not the gay community’s problem, it’s Tracy Morgan’s.
And if a 15 year old kid repeats that to some gay kid every day, does it even matter he understands Morgan didn’t mean it?
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That quote is really old. Really, really old. Slow news day, Qweerty?
On topic, anyone who remembers Louis C.K feeling the need to comment on the Tracy Morgan thing will remember that his pro-Morgan opinion was clearly motivated by his own fear that he’ll one day land in the same situation – making a joke that people take seriously, marring his public profile.
C.K doesn’t understand the huge difference between offensive gay jokes and nonoffensive gay jokes – the latter makes fun of stereotypes, the former actively promotes the comedian’s actual bigotry. Tracy Morgan’s set clearly was the latter. The man was a known homophobe long before he make those jokes that got him in big trouble.
All of this said, C.K’s defending Tracy Morgan made me lose all respect for him. Shame.
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yes, at what point was Tracy Morgan’s rant a comedy routine? When/where did it seem he was trying to be funny or live up to his billing as a comedian? The fact that he was funny on 30 Rock had to do with the fact that someone else wrote lines for him, certainly not as a result of his own abilities–those were painfully on display for all of their gimp proclivities on SNL.
Sorry, no pass–I take the man at his word. He has some sort of weird problem with gay men.
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Michael Richards shouted out “nigger” a bunch of times at a black guy because his only comedical talent is falling down and making silly faces, and he likened his yelling at a black guy to the over-the-top jokes that comedians like Sarah Silverman make.
Tracy Morgan’s homophobic rant was an unfunny improvized riff that fell flat. The facebook post that made this all come out even states: “Tracy then said he didn’t fucking care if he pissed off some gays, because if they can take a f*cking dick up their ass… they can take a f*cking joke.” It was an unfunny version of this bit, basically: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2Hlsl7bPQg
And let’s not confuse Tracy Morgan with somebdy who can articulate a well-thought out opinion anyway, because the only reason why anything he says is funny is because he has a silly voice.
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Tracey Morgan didn’t say anything “hilarious” in that anti-gay rant. He didn’t even say a joke. It was just an angry hate rant, and gay audience members with the ability to reason and understand called it as they saw it.
Comedians are like cops, they defend each other and refuse to acknowledge their group’s offenses no matter how grievous.