I haven't felt the need to do an Idiot of the Week post in a while. Maybe I've just been a bit burned out on the whole thing. Because it has been a while, I'm going to be a bit liberal with the timeline on this one. The incident that earned Tracy Morgan Idiot of the Week recognition actually occurred last week but did not come to my attention until this week. I'm making an exception because it continues to baffle me how this guy has any fans at all.
What are we to make of celebrities who use their celebrity to spread hate? I'd suggest that shouldn't be celebrities for long.
During a recent performance in Nashville, TN, Morgan delivered a bigoted tirade against homosexuals. Some of the highlights:
God don’t make no mistakes; all this gay stuff is bullshit.
There is no way a woman could love and have sexual desire for another woman, that’s just a woman pretending because she hates a fucking man.
If my son were gay he better come home and talk to me like a man and not [like a homosexual] or I’d pull out a knife and stab that little N***** to death.
I appreciated the reference to the god in which Morgan apparently believes; that statement tells us about the source of his bigotry. Of course, joking about stabbing his own son for being homosexual suggests that Morgan is thoroughly out of touch with what LGBT youth continue to face.
As ThinkProgress LGBT points out, Morgan has a history of making homophobic comments. That he continues to do so is probably not accidental.
Morgan has since apologized via a brief statement in which he says that he "clearly went too far" and recognizes that his comments were "not funny in any context." The Human Rights Campaign has refused to accept Morgan's apology, saying that it is not enough. I tend to agree.
