Rant: The number that finally made me forgive Kevin Hart

I used to think his old homophobic jokes were unforgivable, no matter how many apologies he gave. But when I saw he'd donated $100,000 to LGBTQ youth charities over 5 years, that specific number changed my mind. Still, can you really buy forgiveness with a check like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

theajohnson6d ago

ok but that number is actually way off lol. i looked into it after someone posted about it and it turns out he donated like 50k total over like 8 years, not 100k in 5. still a solid chunk of change but the difference matters when you're talking about buying forgiveness. i think what got me was less the dollar amount and more that he kept doing it quietly without making a big media thing out of it each time. plus he actually changed his whole onstage persona too, not just wrote a check.

charlies376d agoTop Commenter

Yeah but see that's exactly what I mean though. The fact that he did it quietly over years without trying to get credit for it says a lot more than the exact dollar amount. People get so hung up on the numbers but the real story is he changed his whole approach to performing and didn't even mention the donations until someone else dug them up. That persona shift from the loud party guy to someone more grounded and honest, that takes actual work. Writing a big check is easy if you have the money, but retooling your whole act and how people see you, that's a real commitment. I think the quiet consistency of the donations just backs up that he was serious about the change, not just trying to buy his way back into people's good graces.

eva_moore6d ago

Hang on, I actually looked into this same thing a couple months back and the numbers are a little different than what you're saying here. From what I saw, he donated roughly 75k over 6 years, not 50k over 8, but you're right that the viral post definitely exaggerated it. That quiet approach though, it's interesting because small regular donations without any press release or PR team involved do feel a lot more genuine than some giant one-time check with a photo op. And yeah, the persona shift was the bigger deal to me too, like he stopped doing that loud "look at me" comedy and got more reflective, which is way harder than just writing a check.