Sean L. McCarthy

Roberto Schmidt/GettyThe Kennedy Center Honors, with the sitting president of the United States in attendance, ends each year by celebrating lifetime achievements of our nation’s greatest performing artists. Since 1998, the center has also hosted a step-sibling event in the spring specifically for comedians: the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.Citing Twain for “his uncompromising perspective on social injustice and personal folly,” a select committee has bestowed this award in his name to now-late greats including Richard Pryor and Jonathan Winters, as well as to still-living legends such as Lily Tomlin and Carol Burnett.This year, Kevin Hart has been named as the 25th recipient of the Mark Twain Prize (the Kennedy Center skipped 2020-21 due to the pandemic). And with absolutely no offense directed to Hart specifically, his selection begs the question: Why now? What has the 44-year-old stand-up comedian, movie star, and omnipresent TV commercial pitchman done to deserve singling out in 2024?Read more at The Daily Beast.

ADAM ROSEINGLEWOOD, Calif. — There’s locker-room talk, and then there’s what the entire global Netflix subscriber base may have witnessed Sunday night.Seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady allowed his former teammates, coach, owner, his longest on-field rival, a couple of celebrities and a pack of truly unleashed comedians go off on him in the largest-attended, longest-ever and most likely most-watched live broadcast of a comedy roast from the Kia Forum for the Netflix is A Joke Fest. The old Friars Club roasts in New York City may have gone longer and featured as much raunch back in the day, but none of those events were ever live streamed globally to a potential audience in the mega millions.Kevin Hart set the tone and the bar below the belt from the get-go as the roast’s host, saying this about the Forum’s previous sports dynasty owners of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers. “They called this place Showtime because Jerry Buss used to show everybody his dick in this building,” Hart joked. “A lot of nasty shit has happened in this building … I wish I had a blacklight right now, I’d turn that bitch on now so y’all can see all the cum stains you sitting on in these nasty-ass seats.” He then cackled, adding: “Hahaha! That’s right. You better get comfortable being uncomfortable, baby!”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Clifton Prescod/NetflixINGLEWOOD, California—Given a live global platform Saturday night by Netflix, Katt Williams closed out an electric hour of comedy punctuated by multiple audio/visual cues with a call for the United States to pay out reparations for enslaving generations of Black Americans, and citing our eager willingness to fund other nations such as Ukraine right now as proof of concept.“It is now time for Black people in America to get paid reparations for everything that them and their ancestors have been through in American history,” Williams declared in front of 6,000 in attendance at YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California, plus upward of millions more watching live on Netflix. “Why now, Katt? Thanks for asking, white friends. I’ll tell you why now. And understand white friends, I don’t speak for all Black people. But I do speak for all n—rs. And you are not supposed to know the difference.”Williams continued: “The time is now. And understand, white friends. I know you’re thinking, no seriously, Katt, why now? I’ll tell you why. And these are the facts. We just gave $100 billion to the Ukraine. And God bless the Ukrainians. But off the record? We don’t know them n—-rs like that! You could’ve gave that money to Black people. The fuck? We done gave them all that money. The truth is they over there getting their ass whooped over there. You coulda gave that money to the Black people of Los Angeles, and they’d have went over there and whooped their ass in two weeks. Look. It looks like reparations is for Black people. But it’s not. It’s for you, white friend. It’s for you. It’s going to help us, but it’s for you. Sure, every Black person going to wake up with $20 million in the bank. So the fuck what? It’s for you, white friends. You think American been great before? Wait til we got a country full of rich n—rs. This fitting to be the greatest country in the world, bitch!”Read more at The Daily Beast.

HBOAlabama’s Supreme Court ruling last week that frozen embryos fertilized in test tubes legally qualify as living, breathing human beings sent Republicans scrambling to clarify their positions so as not to lose votes from women in the 2024 elections—and John Oliver wasn’t about to let them get away with it.On Last Week Tonight, Oliver said equating in vitro fertilization (IVF) with actual people was “wrong for a bunch of reasons—mainly if you freeze an embryo, it’s fine. If you freeze a person you have some explaining to do.”But the Alabama court ruling carries “massive implications” nationwide, as an estimated 2 percent of Americans are born through IVF. The ruling prompted many of that state’s fertility clinics to immediately stop treatments out of fear they could be sued for wrongful death for any unused, discarded or destroyed embryos. That, in turn, prevents countless couples from continuing their efforts to have kids. “IVF cycles take weeks of careful monitoring and expensive treatments. You can’t just hit pause and wait out a court case,” Oliver said.Read more at The Daily Beast.