The Oscars slap: Chivalrous, violent or overblown?

Readers weigh in on Will Smith hitting Chris Rock during the Academy Awards

Have we lost our sense of decency?

The disgraceful event that took place during the Oscars is just another example of the withering away of the values that once made us the greatest nation in history. Please, no more excuse making, and no more dumbing down of America. What happened to class, dignity, grace, self-respect and respect for others, decorum, etiquette, discipline, integrity, work ethic and the golden rule? We are like the frog in the pot of slowly boiling water. The question is whether there is any hope for our culture to walk this back, or is it too late. It has nothing to do with race, gender, political orientation or social class. Those are the shining objects that social and news media, politicians and Big Tech are trying to use to distract us from the real issue, and that is that we are losing our values and our sense of decency.

— Charles Michael Sitero, Ormond Beach, Florida

Wrong lesson from a teachable moment

At the Oscars Awards Show, when a disrespectful joke was told, Will Smith went up on stage and assaulted the presenter. There was an opportunity after the incident to make a positive teaching moment. Mr. Smith missed the mark by a wide margin.

About 40 minutes after he hit Chris Rock, most of what I heard in his acceptance speech for Best Actor was a long litany of excuses for an antiquated concept of a man protecting women in his life, in that if a man insults a woman in your life, take him down.

Mr. Smith stated that the person he portrayed in the movie for which he received the award was a fierce defender of his family. Mr. Smith also talked about how he protected the female actors in the movie. Some of the litany included his saying that he was “overwhelmed by what God was calling” him to do. Part of that calling, Mr. Smith said, was to protect and love people. Near the end of his speech Mr. Smith said, “Love will make you do crazy things.”

Neither love nor God’s calling were involved in his assault of Mr. Rock. Just after the assault, there was intense anger in his yelling at Mr. Rock from a front-row seat to keep his wife’s name out of Mr. Rock’s “(expletive) mouth.” Twice.

Hurt and anger make you do crazy things, NOT love.

But instead teaching the truth of the moment, what Mr. Smith imparted was the wrong lesson. A BBC News report stated that Mr. Smith’s son, Jaden, tweeted after his father hit Rock: “And that’s how we do it.”

— David C. Hill, Forest Hill

Would have done worse if it were my wife

Actor Will Smith is being criticized for slapping comedian Chris Rock on the Oscar telecast, for cracking a joke about Mr. Smith’s wife, making fun of the results of her autoimmune disease. My late wife Betsey had an autoimmune disease, and if anyone had ever cracked a joke about it or its effects on her in front of any audience, much less on international TV, I would not have done what Mr. Smith did. I would have waited until afterward, in private, and then visited the poor jokester next day in his hospital room.

— Stan Heuisler, Baltimore

‘Stunning’ egoholics still put me to sleep

I heard the Oscars show won the Nobel Prize for the foolproof cure for insomnia. It is said the sleep is so deep that it sometimes is misdiagnosed as being comatose. Would someone please tell the “stunning” egoholics in the audience the stun gun ran out of ammunition a long time ago?

— Ralph Heeber, Havre de Grace