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Jamie Foxx Made a Joke About Bruce Jenner’s Transition and People Are Outraged

He included it in his opener at the iHeartRadio Awards 2015

Mar 31, 2015 07:29 GMT  ·  By
Jamie Foxx on the red carpet at the iHeartRadio Music Awards 2015
   Jamie Foxx on the red carpet at the iHeartRadio Music Awards 2015

Jamie Foxx opened the 2015 edition of the iHeartRadio Music Awards, which took place on Sunday in California, with a couple of jokes aimed at one of the most talked-about celebrities of the moment: former Olympian and reality star Bruce Jenner, who is said to be transitioning to female.

Jenner never acknowledged these rumors, but they have been picking up traction in the past few months, with more reputable outlets running them as legit. Various LGBT groups have been praising him for his decision, which is said to have come after 50 years of personal struggle and fears.

To Foxx, the whole thing is just funny, perfect for joke material.

Jamie Foxx’s Jenner jokes fall flat

“We got some groundbreaking performances, here too, tonight,” the comedian said in his opener at the awards gala. “We got Bruce Jenner, who will be doing some musical performances. He's doing a his-and-her duet all by himself.”

The camera zoomed in on Chris Brown in the audience, who was laughing into his fist, half embarrassed, half amused. Some cheers and claps were heard too.

Foxx seemed to apologize for it with another joke of the same kind, adding that he wanted to bust Bruce’s nuts while he still had them. A video of the segment is available below.

Word online has it that both jokes fell flat with the celebrities and fans in attendance, because few people laughed. You can’t tell that from the video, because it’s probably more obvious in a larger segment, which includes other jokes that were received better.

“Jamie Foxx should be ashamed”

Twitter reactions are the best way to tell that Foxx’s jokes weren’t appreciated. More than that, viewers at home who took to social media right after the opening monolog to vent, stated that the comedian should be ashamed of himself for picking on someone like Bruce and basically kicking him when he’s down, because he’s going through a very difficult moment in his life.

You can find some samples of the comments made about his idea of “comedy” below, right under the videos. Speaking of which, the second one is a paparazzi-made clip with Burt Jenner, Bruce’s son.

TMZ photogs caught up with him at the airport and asked him how he felt about Foxx’s jabs at his father: as Burt sees it, Jamie is slipping into irrelevancy and he’s doing whatever he can to keep himself in the headlines.

Admittedly, he didn’t include those 2 jokes in his opener because he really thought they were funny, but because he badly needed something to get him attention from the media. These days, nothing does that better than saying something controversial.