Why Hart tells no Fairytale when it comes to speaking his mind
Unlike the American comic, Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan long ago earned the benefit of the doubt, writes Donal Lynch
WHAT’S surprising, in a way, is that there aren’t more classic songs with the word ‘faggot’ in them. Or that there aren’t more comedians, like Kevin Hart, who now have to account for halcyon homophobia — Hart last week lost the gig hosting the Oscars because of yearsold gay jokes, which someone found on his Twitter account.
Both Fairytale of New York, with its perennially controversial lyric, and Hart came from an era when casual gay slurs were part of the wallpaper of our lives.
I’m old enough to remember Fairytale coming out and in the 1990s, in school, I heard the word faggot on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. It never seemed very shocking and often was hardly even properly malicious.
The average parent in those years would have pretty much echoed what Hart 10 years ago said he’d tell his son — basically that he, Hart, would be horrified. And most men, like Hart, moved through the world in slight terror of being perceived to be effeminate. The only difference is that he, like Shane MacGowan, had millions of people watching and listening to him.
So if almost every schoolboy was using the word ‘faggot’ a few years ago, and homophobia was so folded into adult society, is it wrong, now, to hold the likes of Fairytale and Hart to modern standards of political correctness? Are we confusing life and art? And should there not be an amnesty, where we accept that everyone has evolved and learnt that they were merely products of an era?
Perhaps it depends on the context, who the person is, and how they explain where they came from.
With more humility and grace than most of the people who rushed to make his point for him, Shane MacGowan pointed out that it was a character in his song, an imperfect one at that, who used the word.
He also said he’d be fine with the word being edited out of the song (like thousands of hit tracks are edited every year, he didn’t add). It was a masterclass in gracefully shrugging your shoulders and taking the high road.
And then you have the added context of understanding that MacGowan and the Pogues were allies before allies existed.
In a signed letter from 1988 they urged people to join a rally held to protest against Clause 28 — Margaret Thatcher’s hated law which prohibited the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in communities and schools.
At a time when it was deeply unpopular (and most gay pop stars were in the closet), Shane stood up for gay people. Someone like that has earned the benefit of any doubt, to be as free and true as he needed to be in his art. It’s a miracle that he’s alive and we shouldn’t be bothering him with this copy-and-paste debate about the only Christmas song with any real heart.
Hart, on the other hand, has a very different kind of form.
For one thing, the issue with much more recent gay jibes — all in the last 10 years. They were made as himself, on social media, with zero comedy value — just telling people this looks ‘gay’ and so-and-so is a ‘fag’.
Of his poor kid he wrote: “Yo if my son comes home & try’s 2 play with my daughters doll house I’m going 2 break it over his head & say n my voice ‘stop that’s gay.” And he wrote that the same year that director Brett Ratner was pilloried for using an anti-gay slur in an interview and stepped down from producing the Oscars. The times were as sensitive then as they are now.
Once the tweets were unearthed and the controversy grew, the Academy reportedly gave Hart an ultimatum: apologise or be removed from the show. And so he did say something. But it didn’t sound to anyone quite like contrition.
In a filmed Instagram post, he appeared bratty, defensive, and completely dismissive of the growing pushback. He said he was “in love with the man that I am becoming”, and later added that he chose to “pass” on giving the apology the Academy wanted.
Hart said he pinned the controversy on “internet trolls”. He later sent his regrets to “the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past”.
It didn’t pass the smell test though, and Hart, like Roseanne Barr earlier this year, was removed from his perch by his own Twitter thumbs. It was a reminder that these days internet shitstorms get heads to roll.
Hart once said something about the Irish having a good sense of humour. Maybe that’s why most of us get it that the clash of wit and sadness in Fairytale of New York trumps any slight niggle about hearing people sing the word ‘faggot’ in a lyric. And why we won’t miss Kevin Hart’s Oscars jokes.
‘When it was deeply unpopular, Shane stood up for gay people’