On Tracy Morgan

[Trigger warning for homophobia.]

I've gotten a few emails about former SNL alum and 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan's viciously homophobic garbage rant during a comedy appearance in Nashville, so here's a thread for discussion.

I don't have a lot to say about it. I guess I'm a little surprised that it's suddenly news, since his stand-up act has been a fuckload of homophobic, misogynist, and disablist trash, littered with rape jokes, for at least a couple of years. But I'm glad it's getting attention now.

Yep, he's got cigarette butts where his decency should be, and he is one of the many reasons I don't tune in to 30 Rock. Insert here everything I have said in this space literally hundreds of times before about my profound and comprehensive contempt for homophobia and the people who gleefully engage in it. You're gross, Tracy Morgan.

I'll just note one other quick thing: While I support the urge (and need, IMO) to hold entertainment producers accountable for continuing to employ unapologetic bigots, I wonder why it is that Tina Fey is the only producer, among many, including her fellow executive producer of the show Lorne Michaels, who is nearly as famous as she is, and her co-star Alec Baldwin, who has himself received a producer credit on 61 episodes, of whom accountability is being demanded?

Even the argument that Fey has been an ally to the LGBTQI community, and thus must be held to a different standard, doesn't hold water, given the fact that Baldwin has been, too.

It seems as though Fey is being treated as the singular gatekeeper of Morgan's principles (or lack thereof), in an echo of the age-old stereotype that boys will be boys and it's up to women to soften them and control them and deliver consequences for moral failures, that women are the exclusive arbiters and protectors of society's morality.

Yeah, hold Fey accountable for employing a shit-head on her hit show, but hold the rest of the producers accountable, too. She isn't his mommy.

UPDATE: Morgan has issued an apology through his publicist: "I want to apologize to my fans and the gay & lesbian community for my choice of words at my recent stand-up act in Nashville. I'm not a hateful person and don't condone any kind of violence against others. While I am an equal opportunity jokester, and my friends know what is in my heart, even in a comedy club this clearly went too far and was not funny in any context."

Ugh, that "equal opportunity jokester" stuff makes me barrrrrrrrrrrf. As Tami said just the other day in a great post: "No comedy is really equal-opportunity. Why? Because our society is not equal opportunity. We are not all the same."