Visibly shaken by earlier events, a tearful Smith acknowledged Venus and Serena Williams and the entire Williams family for providing him a chance to play their father. Fifth Amendment. 11:16 PM EDT, Sun April 3, 2022, Will Smith, right, hits presenter Chris Rock on stage while presenting the award for best documentary feature at the Oscars on Sunday, March 27, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Neither Will Smith nor Chris Rock deserve to be canceled for their behavior on Sunday. Will Smith, right, hits presenter Chris Rock on stage while presenting the award for best documentary feature at the Oscars on Sunday, March 27, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. chris rock the hypocrisy of our democracy. If @willsmith seriously did that and he wins the OSCAR he just stained the greatest moment of his career. Democracy requires that citizens expect leaders to tell the truth in public, and not to invent lies in self-defense when their foibles if not their crimes are exposed. Weekly update on whats driving U.S. national security policy. Fortunately failing political news show "World News Today" have representatives of the 5 permanent members, the upholders of democracy. So much so, weve had to legislate protection against hair discrimination. This is the hypocrisy of "American democracy". Mind you, thirty minutes ago, he literally assaulted someone on the stage. That is what Trumps hypocrisy seeks to achieve. There is, of course, a more compelling argument that, facing domestic crisis, America would be arrogant to preach democracy to others and irresponsible to waste its resources doing so. Hypocrisy erodes that trust. His approach to describing race was quick-witted and ingenious. Will Smith is an icon whose seamless transition from 1990s rapper to sitcom star The Fresh Prince of Bel Air to full-on Hollywood leading man has made him perhaps the biggest crossover star of Generation X. Lets start with the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago. You may opt out at any time. Even today, a subtler form of prejudice remains popular among politicians trying to keep the United States out of foreign conflicts. Defending democracy requires that we do not give in to that effort. Click + to receive email alerts when new stories are published on Evening roundup with our editors favorite stories of the day. Yet few of us know what it is to be on the receiving end of massive jokes for years, to have your children and your marriage made a mockery of and memed. But to make matters much worse, approximately a half hour later, Will Smith won the first Oscar of his acting career. Twitter:@NicholasDanfort, NEW FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Instead, he will forever be remembered for his violent outburst on stage. 2. Texas GOP votes to censure Rep. Tony Gonzales over support on gun, same-sex Watch live: Trump, Bolsonaro and more take the stage on Day 3 of CPAC. Over and over, folk will say our generation, our era, has not seen war on our homeland, as if Black neighborhoods have not been devastated by police and blocks have not been bombed and set aflame by white folk and government alike. "Our forefathers were not the Pilgrims. Comedian Chris Rock was on stage and made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith being bald, referencing a role in the film GI Jane 2. Last Wednesday, in a different display of hypocrisy, the former president invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to testify almost 450 times during a deposition in New York Attorney General Letitia Jamess investigation of the Trump Organizations business practices. Nor does the wrongness of Smiths behavior make Rocks joke the right thing to have said at the Oscars. Back in 1998, when he went to South Carolina to discuss the Confederate flag with locals on The Chris Rock Show. In his stand up routine, Rock goes through all sorts of things that are totally fine when white people do it, but if a black or brown person tried it. An expert's point of view on a current event. Keep up with the world without stopping yours. Fighting fascism forced Americans to confront racism and religious prejudice at home. Black History Month 2023: Today's Freedom Fighters, 22 Memorable Nip Slips & Wardrobe Malfunctions You HAVE To See Now, 20 Of Our Favorite Celebrity Nipples (NSFW PHOTOS), Happy Eggplant Friday! I disagree Smith derailed the ceremony, which is unfortunate, but the importance of these groundbreaking moments was not diminished. It has been a consistent through-line in his political career and his time in the White House. As thehost of the 88th and most controversial Academy Awardsso far, many are interested to see how the funny man tackles the issue of #OscarsSoWhite amidst all the racial tension going on in the country. CNN Sans & 2016 Cable News Network. At one point, he apologized to the Academy and those in attendance (although not to Rock) and ended by wondering if he would ever be invited back to this event. The Democrats, despite applauding the announcement of. He feels no compunction about doing the very things that he denounces and uses to demonize his political opponents. On Sunday, Tunisian President Kais Saied, who is supposed to share power with Parliament and a prime minister, suspended the former and dismissed the latter. On Friday's broadcast of HBO's "Real Time," host Bill Maher said that the biggest loser of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock was the "liberal hypocrisy" where people "who are always talking about microaggressions in the workplace" and believe "silence is violence and words can be violence" were okay with actual violence . This entry was posted on 02/19/2010 at 2:15 pm and is filed under news, reading, ugh.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. 2023 Cable News Network. ABC News reports that in July 2016, Trump tweeted, Crooked Hillary Clinton and her team were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information. Not fit!, In September 2016, Trump said that, We also need the best protection of classified information. 0 . But its not just the United States. However, none of us are the worst thing we have ever done. Join FPs Ravi Agrawal for a frank discussion about the Biden administrations China policy and alternatives that it ought to consider. One could easily argue that Smiths chameleon-like ability to present himself as palatable to both Black and White audiences helped pave the way culturally speaking for the rise of the nations first Black president. It leads people to discount what others say in the political arena and promotes a corrosive disgust with politics. Im not talking about rich, Im talking about wealth., The time he spoke about gun control in his 1996 standup Bring The Pain.. But like Wendy Rene sang, After laughter comes tears.. There is a way in which jokes can be wielded as weaponry, a slap across the face, and we all seem to wrestle with when well acknowledge the sting. There is no winning side. Chris Rock, backed by freedom of expression, can lob rhetorical jabs against Jada Pinkett Smith and claim protection by saying he was joking. And, of course, throughout his 2016 presidential campaign Trump repeatedly harped on Hilary Clintons alleged carelessness in handling classified information. Discovery Company. Seconds later, Will Smith walks onto the stage and directly up to Chris Rock then slaps him across the face. Suck it up. Download the FP mobile app to read anytime, anywhere. That is to say, it is the creation of a more genuinely pluralistic country, culminating in the election of a black president, created the violent backlash we are witnessing today. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. He has been a master of saying one thing and doing another. This, too, is violence. Create an FP account to save articles to read later and in the FP mobile app. Introducing our Summer '21 issue starring @ChrisRock. Again, what constitutes violence in America is who the victims are. Trump responded to the search by characterizing what the FBI did as an unAmerican, unwarranted and unnecessary raid and break-in of his home. After slapping Chris Rock, he returned to his seat, attended to by high-powered friends like Denzel Washington and Tyler Perry. Democrats, who have been sore losers for four long years, and who have repeatedly deceived the American public in order to promote the Russian collusion conspiracy theory, have no standing to . Trumps success in politics has been founded on insinuating that democracy is a ruinous sham, opening a wide field in which Trump should be free to do as he wishes. Comedy isn't a game for the conservative, but Chris Rock has built a career on taking it to the next level. Count Donald Trump's hypocrisies. 31st annual grammy awards. This is the hypocrisy of "American democracy". US President Donald Trump, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, holds a press . Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Relations between the United States and China seem to be getting frostier by the day. Explained: Why Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, how the actor made a return; will Chris address the infamous incident? Humiliating a Black woman fighting for equity is not a ha-ha moment. Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) March 28, 2022. Some called for Smith, a high-profile Black actor, to be arrested and jailed (its worth noting that according to the Los Angeles Police Department, Rock declined to file a report), or to face sanctions from the Academy. Condimentos Qdelcia. Reprising some of his greatest hits, Trump said: Nuclear weapons is a hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a hoax.. The comedian was at the centre of the biggest scandal to hit the awards . Black people have struggled for so long to gain equality in this country. Chris Rock said it, Im just quoting it. So unused to being challenged, the United States has become so filled with anxiety over China that sober responses are becoming nearly impossible. White people were crazy,and today they act less crazy.. It truly is a shame, for so many people. Your guide to the most important world stories of the day. She joined the #OscarsSoWhite movement calling for diversity and boycotted the show. Ukraines economy and infrastructure have been dealt blows that will take decades to recover from. Chris Rock has always done that. But the ceremony and its dramatic turns have also broadly telescoped the political divisions within America that have become part of a new cultural war. If recent events have provided a more objective perspective, it will hopefully drive Americans to rejoin the global fight for democracy with renewed conviction and humility. The job of a comedian is to make light of heavy situationslike racism. He paints abigger picture for the crowd and allows everyone to take away from it what they want. As we talk about Rock, Smith, harmless jokes, and what protecting Black women does and does not look like dont forget about Dave Chappelle. Stop closing your eyes to the trans folk his stand-up targets. In announcing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, for example, President Donald Trump explained that Turks and Kurds had been fighting for hundreds of years and that [t]heres a lot of sand that they can play with. It was a cruder version of an argument that Democratic presidents have made as well, be it former President Bill Clinton blaming Bosnias genocide on ancient hatreds or President Barack Obama saying the Syrian civil war was a product of conflicts that date back millennia. These tropes will remain tempting to advocates of a more restrained foreign policy.