“She kept pushing me and pushing me…”
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I repeat, please stop intentionally misrepresenting what I am saying.
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some folks here are making an honest effort to have a conversation about the place of violence in our modern world through the lens of what happened last night.i commend you for your efforts. there’s a well recognized body of u.s. law which has built up around the concept of “fighting words” as well as a highly developed conception of “appropriate escalation” .
unfortunately, some here are using false equivalences and weird hypotheticals to tie the narrative into knots and torture the discourse into surrender. i’m not going to get into who i think is doing what except to say that avoiding muddying the narrative will make for a much cleaner discussion. good luck.
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No, no. There’s many people here and in general social media spheres tossing toxic masculinity around. If I wanted to directly specify your comment in particular I would quote it and not try some passive aggressive thing here. It’s not that Will Smith did a good thing or a non-toxic thing, but there are a lot of people hyper-focusing on Will Smith being the only example of toxic masculinity when the whole feud is largely fueled by toxic masculinity trappings escalating to this moment.
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Comedian makes crass joke about woman’s madical condition. Comedian has history of making same remarks. Available options for a retort:
- Do absolute nothing.
- Send a strongly worded letter
- Gripe about it on twitter
- Arrange to talk to said individual back stage ("That wasnt cool, you should apologize ")
- Arrange to talk to said individually in another setting
- Stand up. Shake head, hands on hips, express that it was not cool. Deal with it later.
- Talk to said individual from the side of the stage in front of everyone (“That wasnt cool, you should apologize”)
- Proceed straight to violence
Seems Mr. Smith chose to go straight to option 8.
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Diddy fixed it… y’all can unclutch your pearls…
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I believe you are not trying to justify violent behavior. That is why it is odd you are using the stereotypical arguments used to justify violence.
Please stop misrepresenting what I’m saying, this is the third time I’ve had to ask you. I’m beginning to think this is not simply a misunderstanding but you acting in bad faith arguments.
I’m not justifying violence. Will Smith was wrong. Chris Rock was wrong. If the Oscars wrote the joke or were involved in it, they were wrong. And you are wrong for intentionally misrepresenting what I’m saying, repeatedly.
I’m saying nobody should be surprised it’s ended up here.
Please stop strawmanning me and harassing me with your intentional actions.
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I feel sorry for Questlove having to follow this debacle.
It was his moment too.
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True. And I know she’s a celebrity on her own. But it does seem extra, IDK, targeted, to be going after the family of someone nominated for the award. Like, I understand that hosts and presenters will rib nominees, but I don’t recall ever seeing something that matches this in terms of bringing someone’s spouse’s or kid’s into it, or their medical diagnoses…
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Plenty of people have said that what Smith did was not cool. But not ALL violent behavior is the same. Stop acting like it is… and stop putting words in @anon85524460’s mouth. That’s not fucking cool either. If you want to make a point, how about do it without attacking other users.
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Apples and oranges with a side of latent racism:
Here’s the thing:
-
The Supreme Court nomination process is a just a little bit more important than the fucking Academy Awards.
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Comparing the way a White man acted when his Black wife was verbally attacked during legal hearings to the way a Black man acted when his wife was verbally attacked during an awards show is rather racially biased… even if it’s a Black man who makes the disingenuous comparison.
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I hope Uncle Phil has lots of pillowy mounds of mashed potatoes in heaven.
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Good points! This Venn diagram of applicability has veeeery little overlap.
KBJ is the nominee, the one in the proverbial hot seat.
JPS is not.
SCOTUS is a whole different ball of wax, as you say.
I wish the article had been about how KBJ reacted when congress went about insulting her husband. That would be a better comparison.
Oh, what’s that? They didn’t verbally attack her husband?
Well, there you go.
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Exactly.
Bad comparison which inadvertently feeds into the myth of White ‘superiority’ is BAD.
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I know it’s a lot easier to think this stuff through afterwards than in the heat of the moment but imagine if Will Smith and his wife Jada had decided to just stand up and walk out of the theater in protest. They’d both look all the classier for it and everyone would still be talking about how Chris Rock’s bad joke was out of line.
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That is not what is happening here. Regardless of your intentions, it is a valid point that the language you have chosen is the same language that is used by those justifying violence and abuse.
You chose those words. If you are not ok with the fact that those words happen to be used by those who use them to justify actions that you do not agree with, the remedy is to choose different words, not place the blame at those who happen to point out these facts.
You seem to have an ongoing issue where people misinterpret what you say, from your perspective, and you react by blaming the reader. That is backwards. This poster did not create the situation, you did with your choice of words here.
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Oddly enough, never having hit anyone in earnest in my life, I am mostly fine with Smith’s reaction, were it not in the forum it was in. So was my wife, except that she remarked ‘I would have slapped him myself’. The reasons have been mostly already voiced: Jokes about mental / physical illness are ableist toxic crap. Jokes and negative remarks about womens’ apprearance are misogynist toxic crap. Rock has a long history of jokes that put other people down, etc. etc. There was no power imbalance at play. Ther was no violence directed at women or other groups who regularly suffer violence at the hands of men. There were no racial dynamics at play. Noone was injured.
Not knowing how Jada Pinkett Smith feels about the episode, I cannot know whether Smith embarassed his wife or whether she is also fine with the reaction. Obviously, slapping someone as a response to an insult is a neanderthal thing to do (with apologies to actual Neanderthals), but I can somewhat relate to a situation where repeated insults may lead to a short circuit that goes immediately to option No. 8.
What I find objectionable and what hasn’t been discussed much in this thread is the setting. Not necessarily that it was on (inter-) national TV, but that Smith’s action overshadows and spoils what is the career highlight for a lot of other talented people who have worked their asses off and who can be rightly proud for the recognition on the biggest stage that film industry has to offer. Except now few people talk about them.
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