Two weeks ago, Pete Davidson, one of comedies young favorites, wandered onto some thin ice.
During the weekend update segment of Saturday Night Live, Davidson shared a story featuring Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy seal who was wounded while serving in Afghanistan.
“You may be surprised to hear he’s a congressional candidate for Texas and not a hit-man in a porno movie — I’m sorry. I know he lost his eye in war or whatever,” Davidson said of Crenshaw.
Unsurprisingly, the comic was met with a surge of outrage, with numerous conservative groups demanding an apology and some going so far as to say that NBC producers should make up for Davidson’s blunder by offering charitable donations to veteran’s organizations.
However, SNL dealt with it in a surprising and heartwarming way that few would have anticipated.
Last weekend Davidson, once again, sat in on the weekend update segment — this time with a starkly different message.
“I mean this from the bottom of my heart. It was a poor choice of words” Davidson said. “The man is a war hero, and he deserves all the respect in the world.”
Shortly thereafter, Crenshaw came into the frame and leveled a few good-natured jokes back at Davidson and plead with the notion that “Americans can forgive.”
It’s unclear whether or not it’s a comedians duty to publicly apologize if their joke offends someone; nevertheless, this was an instance that was looking rather ugly between the left and the right, and and people showing grace to each other, as they did in this scenario, is something that all of us would like to see more of.