They assume it’s all about quotas and political correction but it is about so much more. People often fail to understand the importance of diversity. They are oblivious to the context because they’ve never been around people who are familiar with it, because they’ve never been held accountable. There was this additional, fraught context that someone didn’t take into consideration and probably couldn’t take into consideration because they are oblivious. This tweet was ill advised and repulsive, not just because the actress was nine, or because MacFarlane had, earlier in the evening, made a joke about her being too old for George Clooney in sixteen years, but primarily because young black women, black girls, are regularly hypersexualized. I do believe the person responsible for The Onion tweet in question would have made that tasteless joke about any nine-year old actress. There are more than a few smart jokes that could illustrate this rock and hard place women in Hollywood are crammed into. Young women in Hollywood cannot win, no matter what they do. I am guessing the tweet was designed to comment on how we discuss famous young women on a night where Anne Hathaway was criticized as too earnest and Kristen Stewart was criticized as too sullen and unappreciative of her blessings. The tweet was meant to be satirical because satire is what The Onion traffics in. By the end of the night MacFarlane had rendered himself irrelevant, sticking to traditional jokes about the length of the ceremony and waiting for the show’s merciful end, for all of us.Īnd then, there was a tweet from The Onion, referring to nine-year old Quvenzhané Wallis as a c-word. They lacked imagination or intelligence and were largely predicated on the notion that the word “boob” is hilarious, which if you are eleven, I suppose it is.
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Most of his jokes fell flat, not because they were offensive, but because they weren’t good.
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The ceremony was what it was and MacFarlane is who he is.
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This is what MacFarlane does and he’s been very successful. And then of course he offered a racist joke, a homophobic joke, a fat joke or two (the Rex Reed joke had a little something to it). We largely knew what to expect with host Seth MacFarlane-immature sexist jokes that weren’t quite funny but could be if he tried, just a little. Last night’s Oscar ceremony and some of the commentary around the ceremony make the best possible case for why diversity matters.