Oh, Zac Efron. Sweet, dumb Zac Efron, star of Dirty Grandpa. You know not your own brute strength, the sheer force with which your idiotic remarks about Martin Luther King and Instagram might hit the Twittersphere and piss off everyone in America. But it’s okay. You’re learning. You’re growing. How else to explain your appearance on Jimmy Kimmel mere days after your aforementioned blunder, an appearance that saw you hugging a total stranger in the name of National Hugging Day?
Zac, is this the beginning of your Apology Tour of America 2016? How else to explain that strange outfit you wore, which included Adidas with no socks and pants that were just slightly too short? How else to explain the fact that you brought a massive boombox onto the show in order to play “I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight” while you intimately embraced an Australian girl? Zac, why can’t you hug someone on national television without playing it off as a goof? Are you okay? Do you need to talk about feeling comfortable with intimacy? Or nah?
Zac, do you really think America will forgive you for being insensitive about one of the most influential civil-rights leaders in history just because you hugged a foreigner for an uncomfortably long time? Do you think showing up on Kimmel with your hair swept back, with your shirt buttoned up all the way to your neck, with that false bravado that just barely hints at a deep and profound insecurity and fear of your own mortality, and quite literally sweeping a tank-top-sporting girl off her feet will make us forget that you just said some really stupid sh*t just, like, two days ago? Do you really think we’re that easy, that blind, that gullible, that insane?
Zac, you’re right. You’re right.