"They went for a twofer. They had a movie about a gay black guy."

Rush Limbaugh: There Would Have Been Riots If “Moonlight” Lost The Oscar

Moonlight became the first LGBT film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards but right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh warned that there would have been rioting if the film had lost.

“They had a movie about a gay black guy,” the shock jock said on a recent broadcast. “I wonder if they were afraid that Hollywood might be — I’m not, no, nevermind. I’m not going to talk about potential violence if one of the two didn’t happen.”

Moonlight

Referencing the 2016 #OscarsSoWhite controversy, Limbaugh argued that Moonlight’s Best Picture win amounted to an affirmative action vote. “Hollywood took it on the chin last year,” he said. “Remember everybody was jumping in their chili, claiming that it was all white, all night, all the nominees, and that the only roles for African-Americans are drug-addled criminals and gang leaders and so forth or servants, and they’re fed up with it.”

“So Hollywood had to make it good last night so they went the twofer,” he said. “Two protected groups in one movie.”

The fact that the film earned a 99 on the review aggregator site Metacritic doesn’t seem to rate with him.

Limbaugh also joked that the Best Picture snafu, which has been referred to as #EnvelopeGate on Twitter, could have been the work of Russian hackers. He said that he wants to be “first to call for an investigation and an independent special prosecutor to look” into the controversy, which he called “embarrassing.”

Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic

In a review for the Sunday Times, critic Camilla Long slammed Moonlight as an “awful, one-note picture of the African-American community’s attitude to gay sex.” She added “it’s a film for a non-black, non-gay, non-working class, chin-stroking, self-regarding, turbo smug audience.”

Moonlight won three Oscars in all, including Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.

h/t: Media Matters