Comedian and movie star, Kevin Hart has decided to step down from his position as host of the 2018 Oscars.

He made the decision to retract being host after some of his homophobic tweets from 2009 to 2011 resurfaced.

Instead of firing him as host, the Academy gave Hart an ultimatum. They gave him the option to apologize and keep his position, or they would find someone else.

Hart chose not to apologize, and passed on the opportunity.

“The reason why I passed is because I’ve addressed this several times. I’m not going to continue to go back and tap into the days of old when I’ve moved on and I’m in a completely different space in my life,” Hart said.

He also said that he didn’t want to apologize because he didn’t want to “feed the internet trolls.”

I’m surprised that he decided to pass on hosting the Oscars. Many entertainers dream about being able to host. Hart himself even said in the past that it is the “opportunity of a lifetime,” and he would be ecstatic to do it.

I understand that he doesn’t want to repeatedly apologize about the tweets, however, what is one more apology if you get to host the Oscars? I think he’s being unreasonably prideful. I get he’s a different person now, and we should realize that and move on, but when you are a public figure with a large platform, you have to reassure people about what you do and don’t stand for. I would have expected the same thing for any other celebrity, whether it had been racist, sexist, transphobic, or homophobic tweets.

What I don’t like is people digging up his old tweets. While I don’t agree with Hart’s comments, I think it’s ridiculous how this generation always wants to dig up dirt on people to portray them as problematic or “cancel” them.

A lot of people do not understand two important things about comedy. One being that comedians aren’t meant to be politically correct all of the time. The whole point of comedians is for them to jokingly give their real, grimey views of the world. The most popular comedians like Eddie Murphy, Louis C.K., and Dave Chappelle didn’t get to where they are being clean cut and proper. The second thing people tend to ignore is that it was a different time when these tweets were posted.

While I am not justifying what he said, you have to put these tweets into context. These comments were posted in 2009-2011, where there was definitely a higher toleration for derogatory language. The culture then was different from 2018 culture, where we are now expected to use the correct titles and make sure not to offend anyone.