Kevin Hart Roast Backlash: When the Joke Isn’t Funny
- Roast joke about George Floyd's death seen as hurtful and disrespectful, especially in Houston where he is deeply connected.
- Comedians debate whether certain topics are off-limits, and if jokes' cruelty is excused by the roast format.
- Kevin Hart criticized for inviting a comic with history of offensive jokes, underestimating the depth of pain the joke would cause.
The Netflix roast of Kevin Hart was built to be wild, sharp, and disrespectful in that roast kind of way. That’s the format. Everybody knows the assignment is to go hard. But a whole lot of folks felt Tony Hinchcliffe crossed a line when he joked that George Floyd was “looking up at us” and laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe. For many people, that was not edgy. That was hurtful, ugly, and flat-out disrespectful.
And here in Houston, it hits differently.
George Floyd is not some random headline to this city. He is tied to Houston, to family, to memory, and to a bigger wound in the Black community that still has not fully healed. So when that name gets used for a cheap shock laugh, people are going to feel something real. They should.
Public reporting shows representatives tied to Floyd’s family blasted the joke and called out the pain it caused. That reaction makes sense. Kevin Hart, though, praised Hinchcliffe afterward as relentless and said everybody involved had to understand the assignment. I get what Hart meant. A roast is supposed to be brutal. But even in comedy, not every brutal joke is smart, and not every laugh is worth the cost.
On my show, I said it plain: the joke felt hurtful and ugly. Comedian Blake NonStop kept it just as real and said some topics carry an unwritten rule in comedy, naming rape, incest, and murder as things comics know should be left alone. Another listener made a point a lot of people need to hear: it is not cool either way. If something is cruel, it does not become fine depending on whether a black comic says it or a white comic says it.
Cheryl Underwood offered a more layered take. She basically said roast humor can sting, but people also know what they signed up for, and comedy can open hard conversations. That is true too. Comedy has always pushed pain into public view. But there is a difference between opening a conversation and reopening a wound.
And this is why Kevin Hart deserves some heat here. Why invite Tony Hinchcliffe, a comic who already had backlash for using a racist slur against an Asian American comedian in 2021, who made a George Floyd video game joke at the Tom Brady roast, and who later stirred outrage with that Puerto Rico “floating island of garbage” line? The answer is probably simple. Hart wanted edge, viral moments, and roast credibility. But if that was the play, he underestimated how deep this pain runs.
Edgy comedy takes skill. Disrespect takes nothing.
Chime in with your thoughts with my Daily Dilemma weekdays starting at 2:20 in the afternoon on Majic 102.1.
You can, at your description watch the roast portion of Tony Hinchcliffe below. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED!
