People Aren't Seeing Why the Will Smith Slap was Especially Soul-Crushing

Hosts make jokes like that at every Academy awards, and Will was laughing too...at first.

Spot on.

Chris was initially in the wrong for picking on Jada. Yes, he's there to tell jokes, and sometimes those jokes will be rude (as many jokes are), but he took it too far by picking specifically on Jada, who is hardly an A-lister and hardly deserved all the (adverse) attention. It seemed a bit like a personal vendetta/obsession on Chris' part.

That said, Will was wrong to act as he did. Violence is not the answer. And, as you say, he came out of the whole thing a lot worse than Chris (although I do get annoyed with the increasing number of people on social media arguing that Will's behaviour was 'righteous' because Chris insulted a Black woman; even if you take exception to Chris' schtick in this instance, I reiterate, violence is wrong).

I didn't say that Will Smith was a bully.

I was just talking about the irony of Chris Rock talking so much about having been picked on in school by the cool kids because he was an outcast and achieved the best revenge by becoming a rich and successful celebrity, only to then get humiliated by an A Lister in front of other A Listers. It's like nothing had really changed. If anything, the bullies that picked on him (the ones that are still alive, anyway) probably got a laugh out of it and felt vindicated.

I wasn't trying to pass judgment on anyone or pick sides.

The point is that it had to be weird for Chris Rock to be humiliated by Will Smith. I've been following him since the beginning of his career. He was always haunted by the fact that he was picked on and bullied throughout childhood and was the outcast in his school and would make a big deal about how he got the best revenge. He was so haunted that he made a TV show about it, called Everybody Hates Chris.

The whole thing that happened at The Oscars was something straight out of junior high school, where the nerdy kid who finally gets his moment at the talent show or some awards show at school gets humiliated by the cool kid. People are thinking that the worst thing about the slap is that he was assaulted. To me, I think that the slap really cut deep, because it was like Chris Rock's bullies got the last laugh.

I'm not pitying Chris Rock. I just found the entire incident ironic and food for thought.

If anything, it's an indictment at how American culture is being run and taken over by people who never grew up past high school. I remember a time when, if a person had been bullied, they would've been able to get past that once they reached a certain age. But apparently, everyone is still mentally and emotionally in high school, especially Hollywood. Smith slapping Rock felt very high school, like he was the school jock defending his GF from the class clown.

I saw this issue at one of my old jobs. The workplace felt like the 13th grade, not like everyone had graduated school and was now in the real world. Very weird.