Comedian Jonah Hill, 30, has received a lot of heat after shouting an anti-gay slur at a paparazzo in Larchmont, California this past weekend.
The actor has long been open about his support of gay rights. This past Nov., Hill even tweeted a picture of himself in a shirt that says, “Love Conquers Hate” in Russian. The shirt’s statement promoted better treatment of the LGBTQ community in Russia. Hill has described his supportive stance on gay rights to E! news, saying, “I have tons of gay friends, gay family members.” He added , “It’s like saying, why do you think people should breathe?”
The incident was caught on camera and obtained by TMZ. In the minute-long footage, Hill is being followed by a group of paparazzi as he walks down the street with a friend. One of the photographers commented on his floral, swim trunk shorts, stating, “I like the shorts though, bro. They are pretty sexy.” The swarm of paparazzis continued following Hill and upon parting ways when one said, “Have a good day. Enjoy.” To which Hill responded, “Suck my dick, you faggot.” Hill was without a representative for further comments.
Hill discussed his slur with Howard Stern on Tuesday morning, Jun. 3. He apologized and said, in defense, that the photographer had been hounding him all day and making rude remarks about him and his family.
This is reminiscent of Alec Baldwin’s incident in Nov., during which he called a paparazzo a “cocksucking faggot”. Subsequently, Baldwin had been accused of homophobia and landed various, unflattering headlines about his comment. Baldwin claimed to have said “fathead”, but the “cocksucker” portion of his comment remained offensive.
Hill should have known better, he must be aware of how the media reacts to such offensive comments. Yet still, it seems that the comment was truly in the heat of the moment with no intention of offending the LGBTQ community.
Stern commented to Hill that he had sounded “angry” to which he replied, “anger is not the right word at all”. He also told Stern that the words he used are not typical of his vocabulary. In addition he stated, “I am not at all defending my choice of words, but I am happy to be the poster boy for thinking about what you say and how those words — even if you don’t intend them and how they mean — they are rooted in hate, and that’s bulls**t, and I shouldn’t have said that.”
Check out Jonah Hill’s explanation here.
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