Tongues are wagging about actor Terrence Howard‘s bizarre Rolling Stone interview. In the controversial interview, Howard says society is more willing to accept effeminate men over — and these are his words — real men.
Howard also shook the table by admitting he beat the crap out of his wife.
The 46-year-old ‘Empire’ star recounts the time when his father, Tyrone — a real man by Howard’s standards — stabbed a man in front of him with a nail file.
Howard was only 2-years-old at the time. Father and son were waiting in line at a department store to see Santa Clause when it happened. Howard remembers the bloody scene like it was yesterday.
“I was standing next to my father, watching,” Howard recalled to Rolling Stone. “Then stuff happened so quickly— blood was on the coats, on our jackets— and then my dad’s on a table and then my dad is gone to prison.”
Tyrone was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to serve 11 months in prison. The stabbing is infamously referred to as the Santa Line Slaying. After serving his sentence Tyrone returned home a more hardened man than before he went in.
Howard says he was six years old when his father taught him to be the wife beater he is today.
Staring at his reflection in a mirror in his posh Chicago penthouse, Howard, who is naturally redhead, imagined his father telling his six-year-old self: “You see that curly motherf—er right there? That little redheaded motherf—er right there? You love him, because the only person that’s gonna be there no matter what happens in your life is that little motherf—er.”
Howard emancipated himself from his parents at age 16 and went on welfare. He told Rolling Stone that he never forgot his father’s words.
Howard said introspectively, “My daddy taught me, ‘Never take the vertebrae out of your back or the back out of your throat. I ain’t raisin’ sheep. I raised men. Stay a man.’ But being a man comes with a curse because it’s not a society made for men to flourish anymore.”
Howard added: “Everything is androgynous, you know? The more successful men now are the effeminate.”
Clearly, Howard is referring to Empire’s openly gay director Lee Daniels, an effeminate yet powerful man who lords his will over heterosexual male actors.
That has to grate the nerves of a man like Howard who still views the world through the prism of a six-year-old’s eyes.
“Since I was a child of three or four,” he says, “I was always wondering, you know, why does a bubble take the shape of a ball? Why not a triangle or a square? I figured it out. If Pythagoras was here to see it, he would lose his mind. Einstein, too! Tesla!” He shakes his head at the miracle of it all, his eyes opening wide, a smile beginning to trace itself, like he’s expecting applause or an award. And all you can do is nod your head and try to follow along. He just seems so convinced that he’s right. And that he is about to change the world. Source
