Chris Rock is the perfect host for this year’s Oscars, a.k.a the White BET Awards. For one thing, it’s the 15th anniversary of his modern classics Osmosis Jones and Pootie Tang. Also, as we predicted, “he may be filter-free when he takes the stage and possibly takes aim at the Oscars’ lack of diversity on Sunday; which should, in the last, make for compelling television.”
It didn’t take long. The first words out of Rock’s mouth: “I counted at least 15 black people in that montage” of the year’s biggest and most beloved movies (and also Ted 2 and Get Hard). From there, he joked that “if they nominated hosts, I wouldn’t have this job,” and that “the last thing I need is to lose another job to Kevin Hart… porno stars don’t make movies that fast.” But why all the controversy about this year’s Oscars, when black people have been ignored by the Academy for decades? Because they were “too busy being raped and lynched to worry about who won best cinematographer.”
The jokes kept flying, at Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s expense (“Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties” — no respect for Magic Mike XXL) and how “this year’s In Memoriam package will be just black people who were shot by police on their way to the movies.”
It was a fantastic monologue, one that can be best summed up by something Rock said: “You’re damn right Hollywood is racist.”
