This week all the talk is about Will Smith bounding up to the Oscar stage and slapping Chris Rock. Chris had joked about Will’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who suffers hair loss due to alopecia areata. The joke was in very poor taste, and I confess I didn’t get it since it was based on Demi Moore’s shaved head in G I Jane which I have long forgotten about.
But,
just food for thought, I wonder if Will Smith would have delivered the slap if
the joke teller had been a different Rock, like, say Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson.
If you figure he wouldn’t have, which is the way I figure it, the whole thing comes down to bullying.
Bullies create most of humanity’s problems. These days, two of the world’s creepiest bullies – Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump – are behind two of the world’s worst current problems. Number one is the war in Ukraine which has its roots in Vladimir Putin’s neurotic self-loathing. Putin is such a loser that, upon hearing Angela Merkel had a fear of dogs, he made it a point to have a large, black dog in the room with them when they met. He’s a pathetic case, but, with Russia’s military power at his disposal, his twisted nature is making life harrowing and painful for thousands of Ukrainians. Also, for thousands of Russians, apparently, as front-line Russian soldiers are beginning to show reluctance to attack the determined Ukrainian defenders.
Even more neurotic than Putin is Trump, a man [sic] who can’t even accept that 81 million Americans voted him out of office two years ago. As he thrashes recklessly around, throwing out preposterous accusations of a rigged election, he undermines Americans’ confidence in our democracy and so he undermines America itself.
I have always had a thing about bullies, and that thing is contempt. Ever since I was a child, I have despised people who belittle, steal from, or crush others just because they feel they have the power to do so. Which brings me back to the Will Smith question. He seemed to think he had the power to smack Chris Rock, but what about that other Rock?
Well, I’ll let this go for now. Smith had the decency to apologize for his actions, eventually even to Chris. So, he’s clearly a better person than either Putin or Trump. But then, so is almost everybody else.
