Let credits roll on Oscars bust-up
RRUDE, unfunny boor delivers snide, hurtful insult to woman in front of her husband, let alone a watching world. Husband, outraged, biffs the bloke on the nose (or in theWill Smith/Chris Rock encounter, smacks him around the chops).
It’s a timeless trope, isn’t it? Almost a cliché, because like all clichés, it’s true: a common reality of everyday life.
I don’t know about you but I can remember witnessing at least three similar encounters over the years. In my case, they all happened at parties.
One man was punched hard on the shoulder after making a hideously personal remark about a woman’s dress; another had a pint thrown in his face for a similar infraction; a third was grabbed by the scruff of the neck moments after smirkingly insulting someone’s décolletage and soundly ducked in an adjacent bowl of punch.
If memory serves, there was scant sympathy for the men who’d delivered the insults.And while there wasn’t totally unqualified support for the husbands who’d jabbed, splashed or doused them, there was a general sense of: “Oh c’mon, the guy asked for it.”
I know this: if I publicly sneered at a woman’s baldness due to alopecia, I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if her furious husband took matters into his own hands and meted out summary justice.
It may not be right, but it’s the way the world turns, whether we like it or not.
Monday’s Good Morning Britain went on air barely a couple of hours after Chris Rock’s nasty, crass jibe
at Jada Pinkett Smith and her husbandWill Smith’s hot-tempered response. So reactions among our viewers were raw and authentic.
In a snap poll, almost exactly half condemned the slap; the other half either said they understood it or actively endorsed it. Many of those latter respondents were women who themselves suffer from alopecia. They said unashamedly they would be proud of their own husbands in similar circumstances.
Pinkett Smith didn’t shave her head in an idiosyncratic, impulsive fashion statement. In that case you could just about accept Rock’s snide “G.I. Jane 2” gag (although it still wouldn’t have been remotely funny).
She had no choice. She’s spoken
publicly of her deep distress at losing her hair. She preferred to brave the Oscars with a buzz cut rather than with large clumps of hair missing and bald patches on display. It was a courageous call and the last thing the poor woman needed was some graceless oaf humiliating her on live TV in front of millions.
Of courseWill Smith shouldn’t have clouted him but we all make mistakes, don’t we? A magistrate friend told me if he’d appeared before her following the assault she would accept there’d been provocation, and been prepared to consider a plea of mitigation.
Smith has apologised, fulsomely. (Rock hasn’t). I really think that should be that.