It’s not often you see a grown man slap another man. If you’re going to violence, men will generally punch other men. When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock for telling a bad joke (“bad” as in not funny and dated, not beyond the pale in terms of taste), it was shocking in that they guy who played Mohammad Ali on screen acted like a pre-teen girl and not an adult, though an adult wouldn’t have tried to hit anyone over a joke. So what was Will Smith’s problem? In all honesty, probably himself.
On the surface, Smith was upset that Rock made a crack about his wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith’s bald head. It was a bad joke – GI Jane was a bad Demi Moore movie from 1997, so saying Pinkett-Smith was making a sequel because of her bald head was not only an obscure reference, it was bad one because the movie was huge flop that’s been completely forgotten.
But Jada knew she was bald, it wasn’t breaking the news to her. It wasn’t even cruel, she looked fine. If she didn’t think she looked fine in her own eyes, she wouldn’t have left the house. This was, after all, the Oscars – these people have teams of the best stylists in the world at their disposal for the ceremony. If you’re uncomfortable with how you look when you leave the house, that’s on you.
Also, Jada has been in public bald before, even recently, so it’s not like she’s aware of it. The question is: was she bald by choice or because of alopecia? The answer is simple: who cares?
Neither of the Smiths, nor anyone else in that room, are special. They don’t get to hit someone because they’re offended or upset. No matter how angry they get over a joke, no one gives a damn. Rock should have, once what had just happened to him registered, gone and try to beat holy hell out of Will. He didn’t because most comics aren’t fighters, they don’t have it in them.
Smith has known Rock for a long time, there’s no way he didn’t know Chris Rock would not hit back.
There’s also the question of what in the hell is wrong with Will Smith to do this in the first place?
If you read or watch interviews with him, he seems a little insecure. By a little I mean a lot, especially when it comes to his marriage. The Smiths have what is called “an open marriage,” which means they are married on paper only. The blessing of your spouse to sleep with anyone you want is not a sign of a healthy marriage.
According to reports, Smith wasn’t comfortable with the arrangement. Will once said, “Jada never believed in conventional marriage.” The question then is why the hell would you marry someone like that?
Once they went to their “open” status, which is generally a sign of problems already in place, Will apparently hired what is called an “intimacy coach,” which is you paying someone to tell you your screwing around is “healthy” or “normal.” I mean, you’re paying them, what are the odds they’re going to tell you what you don’t want to hear?
“He detailed his experience of speaking to an intimacy coach who helped him process his thoughts about having a ‘harem of girlfriends’ — including fellow A-listers Misty Copeland and Halle Berry — despite being married,” according to Buzzfeed.
“What [the coach] was doing was essentially cleaning out my mind,” he said, “letting it know it was okay to be me and be who I was,” he said. “It was okay to think Halle is fine. It doesn’t make me a bad person that I’m married and I think Halle is beautiful.”
Thinking Halle Berry is attractive isn’t a sign of sin, it’s a sign of life. Acting on it is the sin. Well, not according to the “intimacy coach.” “That was really the process that [the coach] worked me through to let me realize that my thoughts were not sins and even acting on an impure thought didn’t make me a piece of sh*t,” Smith said.
But acting on them is the issue.
I’m sure Smith is now completely comfortable sleeping with whatever woman he wants, but in the back off his head it still eats him up that his marriage has come to this and his wife is doing the same thing. He wouldn’t be human if it didn’t.
So, when someone makes a joke about her, any joke about her, it’s another straw on the camel’s back. Chris Rock just happened to toss the straw that broke it. Being an inside joke is one thing, your inside joke being something the whole world is aware of is something else.
Maybe Smith, a Scientologist, was overtaken by his Thetans and needs to spend more time on an e-meter. Or, more likely, he needs to come to terms with the fact that as cool as he is required to pretend to be about being in an open marriage, he simply is not. What that means for him is up to him, but he probably shouldn’t put another “intimacy coach” on the payroll to figure it out, he probably just needs to find a mirror.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.