Ok, I hate to even play into this. Honestly, the plan was to do a behind the scenes/process video related to the upcoming Kai the Hitchhiker book but after spending 30 minutes holding up notecards and talking into the OBS camera then realizing that it wasn't recording the whole time I'll just have to put that one off...
As for "the slap heard round the world," of course the whole thing could just as likely have been staged to create a reason to launch a thousand think pieces finally making the Oscars relevant for the first time in literal years, perhaps decades. The Academy Awards is all about drama and theater, so the idea that something at an event full of actors might be staged isn't so far fetched. Some people have noted how Will Smith initially laughed at the joke and Jada Pinkett-Smith only rolled her eyes before Will came up and did his best sissy slap (Carleton from the Fresh Prince might have had more luck knocking out Rock).
And of course there are the stupid jokes. Why did Will Smith use open hand slap rather than punch? Because paper beats Rock. Or how when the police dusted Chris Rock's face they found Fresh Prints. Haha, it's all kind of funny. But that's not really what I want to talk about. Sure there's the point to be made that if it wasn't staged the best thing Will Smith could have done that wouldn't have ruined his "wholesome, nice guy" brand image would be to take to the stage explaining that comics should stick to things people have control over rather than mocking physical appearance and physical or mental afflictions. Would have made Will the bigger man and stuck to the "nice guy" brand which Oscar night fairly well ruined.
But that's not really the crux of the issue for me. Of course the likes of Jim Carrey (who apparently has to weigh in on every situation as if he's an expert on anything other than making people feel awkward and uncomfortable in interviews). The fact that people are talking about taking Will Smith's Oscar away is the issue for me. Regardless of whether this is a manufactured controversy or not, the fact that Roman Polanski, child rapist, Woody Allen the groomer, Harvey Weinstein the sexually coercive pig, and a whole host of other physically and sexually violent creeps and freaks who have earned accolades from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences apparently aren't a problem.
I won't even go into the issues that Will and Jada so obviously have. His daughter idolizing Jada's ex boyfriend Tupac and how trying to look "hard" and the fact that his wife openly cheats on him might have played in this. All that is what they want people to be talking about, not the dirty secrets of Hollywood. What do you expect when you have the most full of themselves people in the world in one room though?
