Why Did the AV Club Pull a Feature on Big Jay Oakerson?

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Thursday morning at 9:00am, A.V. Club posted the latest edition of their HateSong series with comedian Big Jay Oakerson as “the hater.” By 12:20pm, the story was gone, pulled from the site, seemingly the result of reader complaints.  At 12:26 the A.V. Club tweeted, in reference to the story, “Insensitive remarks in today’s HateSong piece were incompatible with our values and shouldn’t have been published. We apologize to readers.”

HateSong, for anyone who isn’t familiar, is an interview series on the site where A.V. Club writers ask their favorite music artists, writers, comedians and actors to talk about “the one song they hate most in the world.”  Past artists who have taken part in the series include Margaret Cho (Oh Yeah), Steve Coogan (The Lady in Red), Colin Hanks (Theme from CHiPS) and Chris Jericho (Cotton Eyed Joe). This week, Oakerson was the guest “hater”, promoting his new Comedy Central special, Big Jay Oakerson: Live at Webster Hall, which debuts Friday night at midnight. Oakerson chose the Seal song “Kiss From a Rose” to “hate”.

So what the hell did Big Jay Oakerson say that got A.V. Club readers to pick up torches and storm social media complaining that the story was out of line for “making fun of Seal’s appearance” and even alleging racism?

The story is gone, but we did manage to get our eyes on a copy of the pulled article.Here’s what Jay said.

Most of the article focuses on Jay’s take that it’s a soulless song, and that Seal started out as a pretty cool guy, but ended up selling out to adult contemporary music.  He adds, “Also, it’s hard for me to hear romantic songs from someone who looks like Seal.”  AV Club’s Marah Eakin, who interviewed Oakerson for the story then asked “Is it because of his face?”  Jay answered, “When I got asked this question yesterday, that’s what I said. I was like, “I don’t understand why somebody would want to be kissed by a rose, but I get why Seal does, because he got kissed in the face by golf cleats.”

The racism complaint, seems to stem from something Jay says a little later in the story. “I think he lost his soul in some sort of tribal ritual,” Oakerson joked.” Eaken asks, “Did Joel Schumacher perform the ritual, or did someone else perform it?”  Oakerson responds, again, with a joke. “I assume it was something with a lot of fire dancing and a couple of white tourists in a big cauldron.”

The A.V. Club’s twitter was swarmed with comments, first complaining about the article, and then later from tweeters angry about the decision to pull the story. Twitter user Diaphanous Debonaire, complained “Making fun of Seal’s appearance is really beyond the pale stuff ya’ll” and called the article “odious clickbait garbage.”  Tabby Lavalamp complained that the story was “still pretty damned racist” and John Herrington complained that it was “in unusually poor taste.”  Some tweets expressed that they were unhappy with the writer’s comments and questions,  including a comment that read, “Your writer asks “Was it because of his face?” Horrible.”

There were plenty of comments that followed, disappointed with the publication’s decision to pull the story over a few complaints.  “Lol he’s a comedian tools”, “if you need to walk this back and sell out your subjects you should probably just avoid the topic of comedy altogether”, “still probably more interesting than snark-infused regurgitated press releases or ads masquerading as content”, and “so..context is a lost art form, huh?” were just a few of the comments.

It’s unclear whether A.V. Club was apologizing for their writer or for Big Jay, their tweet didn’t indicate either way.

When we reached out to the publication for comment, their Editor in Chief, John Teti told us that they had no further comment.  “The tweet we posted shortly after pulling the article is the extent of our comment on the HateSong matter,” he said.

A rep for Oakerson said Jay tried to reach out to Eaken, but said she wouldn’t take his phone call.  It was also pointed out that Seal himself made a joke about the scars on his face coming from wolves in the movie Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.” (incidentally you can see a clip of that on YouTube.)

Oakerson is not amused.  This evening, he jumped on twitter himself, writing “A.V. Club asks comics to shit on musicians for their stupid website, then buckle when there’s backlash! .”  He also wrote that Eaken, “who was laughing and told me she “loved it” when she interviewed me, is now refusing to get on the phone with me!” Jay promised to take up the issue on his SiriusXM radio show, The Bonfire, on Monday.  “Monday’s is gonna be fuuuuuuun! Cowards will be called out!”

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Interrobang Staff
Interrobang Staff