The necessary takeaway from the Will Smith-Chris Rock kerfuffle

By Kent R. Kroeger (March 29, 2022)

Still from the film He Who Gets Slapped (1924) courtesy of Moving Picture World (Jan. — Feb. 1925) (This work is in the public domain because it was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office before January 1, 1927).

Are we still so culturally backward that men have to defend the ‘honor’ of their wives when verbally attacked? Are we still in the Miocene epoch? Are we living in Saudi Arabia?

Insult my wife. She can defend herself.

Women aren’t property or frail flowers who need men to defend them. Frankly, the women in my life are especially adept at using words to turn their antagonists into puddles of feeble mush.

Too much has already been written and broadcasted about the now infamous Will Smith slap attack on comedian Chris Rock during the 2022 Oscars awards ceremony.

Apparently, Smith thought an insult by Rock directed at his wife — Jada Pickett Smith — warranted a face slap before an international audience.

Lacking any quantitative data at this point, my impression is that public opinion is evenly split as to whether Smith’s actions were justified (or, at least, understandable) given the meanness of Rock’s joke about Smith’s wife.

Shocking to me, however, is the number of celebrities and pop culture commentators who offered their support to Smith, none more surprising than British TV personality, Piers Morgan, who opined:

“Making fun of a woman who’s losing her hair isn’t funny, it’s just unkind.

As for Will Smith, as the cancel culture mob race to destroy him, hysterically demanding he be stripped of his Best Actor award and charged with assault, I find myself moved to defend him.

He was standing up for his wife, the woman from whom he blew off the dust when she was going through a rough time, and said he was going to make shine, and created a safe space for her to get healthy and to grow and define herself.

In previous eras, he’d have been saluted for defending his girl, not savaged by an overly sensitive snowflake society.

And I say that as someone who was once punched in the head by Jeremy Clarkson at the British Press Awards in 2004 after publishing something embarrassing about his private life, and I have no problem with what he did.”