Will Smith slapping Chris Rock prompts flood of crazy media takes: Joe Concha
One CNN host connected the viral moment to Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court hearings
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This article is adapted from Joe Concha's video commentary.
Well, the hot takes on the Will Smith smack-heard-round-the-world go exactly as one would expect.
Into bizarro world.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}We all witnessed something we've never quite seen before at the Oscars on Sunday. A comic makes a joke about a prominent actor's wife, and said actor walks up on stage and slaps the comic.
The clip has been played on television 15 million times since – or so it feels – and everyone paid to "analyze" this stuff weighed in. Some did as if they were drunk.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Howard Stern blamed Donald Trump for Smith's actions, as did Steve Schmidt, the guy who helped start the Lincoln Project. And even a former FBI agent who now works for CNN, Asha Rangappa.
Because you just knew somehow Trump would get dragged into all this.
Comedy director Judd Apatow thought that Will Smith's slap, could have "killed" Chris Rock. Yes, a slap.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}And then there's Forbes Magazine, which asked this question: "Why are jokes always at the expense of Black women?" Yep. Race is getting worked into here as well. It's as predictable as a Joe Biden gaffe on foreign soil. Or any soil!
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And if race is being injected, as sure as the sun rises in the east, we got to hear from Jemele Hill, former ESPN anchor turned CNN streaming host.
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Hill actually said on CNN that Black women were "encouraged" by Smith slapping Rock because of the way Biden Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was "lambasted in the public eye."
That's quite a dot to connect. This is CNN.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But the gold medal for insanity goes to Tayo Bero, who wrote in The Guardian that "White outrage about Will Smith’s slap is rooted in anti-Blackness. It’s inequality in plain sight."
Maybe this was just about a man who felt his wife, who suffers from an auto-immune disease, was needlessly mocked on national TV, and so he hit the guy who said it.
Race had nothing to do with this.
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Yet here we are, giving the folks who play the race card from the bottom of the deck another opportunity to divide the country further, all to draw attention to themselves.