my take on Will Smith vs Chris Rock (Newsletter No. 54)

And that’s why vanity is the worst of the deadly sins.

Will Smith could tell Jada did not like the joke:
1) Possibly fearing the wrath at home
2) In order to maintain his self-delusion of the perfectly imperfect family
3) Years of pent up humiliation (doesn’t mean he didn’t cause hurt also), trying to “set the record straight” publicly… but when everything falls away the truth is you just ended up airing your dirty laundry.

Will did a snap mental gymnastics calculation and zoned in on Chris Rock the scapegoat. Will probably immediately regretted what he did but doubled down with some machismo. Was he always dreaming to play this character? What more manly words are there than “F*ck” and “my wife.”

Denzel (and Tyler, and Bradley) allegedly went to comfort Will, but who knows for what specific reason. Clearly Will is unstable. Were they afraid that the guilty would be suicidal? I hope people were comforting Chris too.

The Powers That Be did not kick Will Smith out because there were more viral video clips to be milked out of this. Point and counterpoint “articles” galore. Opportunities to pan the camera to Serena and Venus. The show must go on. Also, “They’ve” probably been planning for months to give Will Smith his first Oscar to display Their Wokeness, one of the most famous movie stars of all time, a Black man. Don’t let that go to waste. He gave a tearful speech that some people believed. I believed he was unwell. He got a standing ovation. Topsy Turvy Tinseltown.

You defended your lady because she’s a queen because otherwise you wasted 30some years of your life trying to math the math. You couldn’t get mad at her, and you couldn’t get mad at her child of a boyfriend.

You even have your now-adult children brainwashed to defend this toxic behavior for the sake of their own self-preservation. You let them parrot the keywords “family,” “freedom,” “authenticity.”

It’s just like in Succession when Tom was okay with Shiv cheating asking for an open marriage but then started throwing water bottles at Greg.

After the slap Will Smith immediately starts shaking and crying because you don’t know what you’ve done, you're just like ur abusive daddy.

You then try to rewrite history once more, giving a classic phony narcissistic self-victimizing speech, you're protecting ur fam, love makes u do crazy things, devil made u do it. Tiffany Haddish immediately gives a soundbite. is the PR illusion sealed?

Who are you defending Jada against? Is it still the white man’s patriarchy? Is Jada Will Smith’s wife or an entertainer in her own right?

Welcome to Hell, Hollywood.

(Stay safe everyone, the pandemic is hard in insidious ways beyond germs.)

“Madness is only an amplification of what you already are.”-Margaret Atwood