This Tracy Morgan thing continues to be a Thing. Go here for Friday’s post on what went down. Just a quick recap – about a week ago, Tracy was performing in Nashville and he pretty stopped his comedy routine to do a full-blown rant full of ridiculously offensive anti-gay hate speech. No one said anything until a gay activist – who was in the audience – blogged about it on Facebook, and then everything went crazy. After the story came out on Thursday and Friday, Tracy released an apology. Shortly after Tracy released his apology, Tina Fey released an interesting statement:
I’m glad to hear that Tracy apologized for his comments. 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.
It also doesn’t line up with the Tracy Morgan I know, who is not a hateful man and is generally much too sleepy and self-centered to ever hurt another person.
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.
The other producers and I pride ourselves on 30 Rock being a diverse, safe, and fair workplace.
[From Deadline]
I think Tina struck the right cord there, basically giving the impression that while she accepted Tracy’s apology, he was on notice, all while standing up for him as a friend. Meanwhile, Tracy’s 30 Rock costar Cheyenne Jackson, an openly gay actor, went to Out Magazine to release a statement: “I am disgusted and appalled by Tracy Morgan’s homophobic rant. The devastating repercussions of hate-filled language manifest in very real ways for today’s LGBTQ youth. I’ve known Tracy for two years, spent many long hours with him on set, and I want to believe that this behavior is not at the core of who he is. I’m incredibly disappointed by his actions, and hope that his apology is sincere.” Other performers and Hollywood types have been tweeting and blogging about all of this too – you can see some coverage here as well. My take is that people who KNOW Tracy and who have a comedy background seem to think that this was just a comedy bit that went way, WAY off-base, and that he’s not really like this as a person.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
