Never been one to let the carrier drop

So, I thought I’d weigh in on the Will Smith thing, not that anyone cares what I think, but I do watch the Oscars and I am a fan of both Will Smith and Chris Rock.

Do I think what Will Smith did was cool? No. Do I think he should be further punished for it, that it was horrible and deeply damaging? Also no.

I think we need to remember that Will Smith, despite getting paid to do stuff in front of a camera, is a human just like the rest of us. Someone said something insulting to someone he loved, he got angry, he briefly overreacted – by slapping Chris. Violence, yes, but it’s not like he did any permanent damage to Chris Rock, who I am sure has gotten far worse in his career. It was a bit jarring, but I also have to consider that emotions were running rather high, especially for Will Smith who was probably on edge because he was about to find out if he’d won the biggest award of his career.

I also have heard people talk about how Will Smith can’t act like this “as a black person”. Look, whatever the color of his skin, he’s still human. I understand the idea that some folks have to work harder because there’s so many ignorant and or stupid people who start out against them. I mean, after all, we had Obama who had to try to do the nearly impossible (get health care for people like me) – and then of course having had one of the best presidents we’d ever had, we then hand to demonstrate one of the worst (Trump, who even cheats at golf, is probably a russian asset, and tried to overthrow the government when he didn’t win – not to mention lying repeatedly – and, I could go on for many many pages about what a awful human being he is – I think I have, elsewhere, so I’ll return to my original point). But there are still limits.

And my point is, yes of course we all want to represent the best we can be for our race/country/whatever. But we do also have to forgive small mistakes because we are human – which means we are created via a evolutionary algorithm and created as a blank neural network which then has to pattern while immersed in all kinds of emotions. We’re complciated animals and we’re going to have flaws despite the best of our intentions. Will Smith made a mistake. He apologized for it. I do not want to see cancel culture revving up to cancel him for it and i am sure he will regret it for the rest of his life and probably be remembering it on his deathbed. We have no need to punish him further for it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 29th, 2022 at 11:18 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.