I know I'm late on the Smith thing. But I have some time on my hands...
I feel bad for poor old Will Smith and the way he trashed his own legacy with a single bad decision. But it's his own damned fault. He white-knighted for his wife, and now he's paying the price. He should have told her to fight her own battles.
I saw reports of at least one black commentator defending Smith by taking the angle that "It's a black thing," and saying that Smith was right to publicly confront Chris Rock for dissing his wife. Who knows, Smith himself might have been feeling that his past "rapper credibility" was on the line. (Though it probably had more to do with his self-esteem in the face of bad press about his open marriage.) One commentator even supposedly said that Chris Rock's response to the slap was "weak," and that Rock discredited himself by not abusing Smith back.
But that's all ridiculous, of course. If Smith really wanted to turn it into some kind of rapper street fight, then that should have been handled after the show, not onstage. Otherwise there will be shoot-outs and stabbings at award shows whenever black rappers show up.
Meantime I thought Chris Rock was very professional. He kept it together and kept the show moving forward in the very best Hollywood tradition of "the show must go on." He was just a B-lister grinding out a gig for the evening, and he got publicly crapped on by an A-lister pretty much out of the blue. He floundered a bit immediately afterward, but he finished the gig like a pro, and he gains honor by that.
I think the subsequent standing ovation for Smith when he got the big award for the night was in the same note. That is, everyone was in the mode of "the show must go on," and they played it safe and went through the motions. But as the show kept on "going on," the facade became a bit grotesque. Kind of like all of Hollywood had turned into Stepford wives. Some of them are now speaking up after the fact and saying that they were sickened by what they saw. But I guess none of them wanted to be the first to drop the facade at the time of the actual event and react honestly to what had happened.
