Hey, real quick: Has anyone checked lately whether the Oscars are cursed? Like, by magic or something, the better to ensure that what should be a pretty straightforward celebration of making movies isn’t the nexus for some eldritch, clusterfuck-inducing force? Case in point: Just two days after accepting the position of host for the 2019 Academy Awards, comedian Kevin Hart has now announced that he’s stepping down from the role, after refusing to apologize for anti-gay comments he made on social media and during his stand-up sets several years earlier. Hart made the announcement on Twitter—that Alpha and Omega of online communication—alongside, strangely, the apology that people had been demanding from him all along. The tweets came after a series of Instagram videos earlier tonight in which he criticized his critics for all the critiquing they were doing, saying that he’d already addressed his earlier comments—which included multiple jokes about punishing his then-3-year-old son for having a “gay moment”—and just wanted to move on.
The Oscars are now back where they started at the beginning of the week, i.e., searching for somebody closet-skeleton free who’s also willing to put their hand in this garbage disposal and actually host the goddamn things. (Hanks? Buddy? Tom? C’mon, Hanks, help a film industry out.)