The Bitch-Slap Heard Round the World

 

1. I like Will Smith. I like Chris Rock. Neither of them came off this looking their best.

2. Rock has cracked on Will Smith many times. Smith has never smacked him around before. So let's look at what changed.

3. Jada Pinkett Smith was at the Oscars, because she's a bona-fide actress, and married to Will Smith, nominated for Best Actor this year, for 25 years.

4. Rock is divorced.

5. There is a comedy line. And I'm not talking the PC cancel-culture nonsense. There are simply things you don't do. Rock knows this now, just like how a man who picks a cat up by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way, as Mark Twain famously observed.

6. If Rock had poked fun at Smith for having big ears, or doing Wild, Wild West, or noted Jada Smith is more likely to get a Golden Raspberry Award than an Oscar, that would have been in-bounds. And, to be fair, Smith even laughed at the joke about Jada and G.I Jane 2. Right up until his wife let him know the joke at her expense wasn't funny. Her face looked like stone.

7. At that point, Smith sent Rock a message: you don't get to kick retarded kids, and you don't get to crap on a man's wife because of her physical appearance due to her medical condition (alopecia). 

8. People will try to throw out "Rickels" or "Dangerfield", by way of excuse: No sale. Both teased friends and strangers in good fun, and said so publicly every time they did it, and you knew there was no malice in their rips. Anyone who can't tell that after watching them perform for 2 minutes isn't paying attention. 

9. Until last night, Rock didn't know the difference. Now he does.

10. He also knows why it's called a "punchline", and that the Supreme Court wasn't kidding when they recognized that some speech qualifies as provocative "fighting words". "Sticks and stones" isn't a valid argument. Don't believe me; go to any bar, and call someone's companion an "ugly bitch". Be sure you have full dental coverage beforehand. Tell the class how it works out for you. Once your jaw wires are removed.

11. Rock doesn't have cinematic immunity for being a rude jackass just because he's on international TV. But with his one good ear, he'll probably pay a bit more attention to his own inner filter.

12. Standing there afterwards didn't show class; it showed he didn't have the grace to say "I went too far; I apologize". That would have been the Bigger Man gesture. But he doesn't have that in him. And maybe getting someone with more class and grace than recent edgy smartasses to emcee what is supposed to be the biggest event in Hollywood would be a better idea. The Academy hasn't found anyone who was more funny than irritating, and more humorous than raunchy, since Billy Crystal hung up his tux a few years back.

13. Will Smith doesn't have an anger problem, he has a sense of proportion. (Timing, not so much. If he'd instead socked Rock with a closed fist behind closed doors, he'd have saved his wife's honor and his own reputation, and perhaps more effectively with less backlash.) But sometimes, you have to throw an elbow - once - in a televised game, to get some respect. There is something salutary, in a civilizational way, in seeing a husband literally stand up and take a poke at someone who has transgressed the bounds of propriety. If anything, Smith was too gentle with Rock, but in any event, I suspect his point landed home simultaneous with the slap.

14. The big winners were the producers of the show, because it took a probable new record audience low and turned it into an event that'll be talked about for years to come. Rock looks like a graceless jackass, and Smith will have to deal with people thinking he's a hot-head, after 53 years of being no such thing. If the Academy is smart, Rock and Smith will be paired as co-presenters next year, and Rock should wear a sparring helmet. 

15. Smith's recognized acting talent means he's far from over, and Rock's comedy will always find an audience. But unless this hatchet gets buried, they probably shouldn't share the stage in the future. And the notes to future emcees should probably include the delightfully old-fashioned concept that cracking jokes about the spouse of one of the premier headliner honorees is neither funny, wise, nor in-bounds.

16. The only thing Rock did right was not to file a police report. No victim: no crime. That saved him more than Smith, because the LAPD wouldn't make any arrest, and the D.A., in fact no D.A., would ever file charges even if they did. Because they know half or more of any jury would hear about Jada's Smith's medical diagnosis, and in that light, refuse to convict Will Smith of anything short of "he should have closed his fist before he smacked him". Nine chances out of ten, the judge dismisses the case out of hand before trial, because of the precedent in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire, if it ever even got that far.

17. Don't start nothing, won't be nothing.

Rock is lucky Will was channeling Chapelle, and not Fishburne.

UPDATE: Divemedic, who took issue with our analysis of the Alec Baldwin incident, comes to the same conclusions we did here, and for the same reason: there are some jackassical things you might do that merit someone taking a poke at you.