The very plausible possibility has been brought up more than once that Will Smith was reacting out of public humiliation for Jada's affair. It's plausible because a) who wouldn't feel that way? and b) it would explain the extreme rage that Smith displayed about a mild joke told by a comedian who is literally paid to roast people from the stage (and Will himself acknowledged in his speech that putting up with such ribbing is part of the job description). Someone "taking a poke" at his wife might on some level remind him of the affair. He might be enraged at her, but he twists it into being enraged at people who mess with her (especially other men).
Also, the fact that Will himself was laughing at the joke at first, and only reacted after Jada looked hurt, suggests a level of guilt & codependency on his part that might also go a ways toward explaining that rage--especially if those tendencies between them have been habitual. For women, it can be, as Robert Bly once put it, "so wonderful to have this fully grown male acting like a worm.". Anger can grow with every codependent interaction. Witness the jokes about Jada carrying Will's balls in her purse and suchlike...maybe there's something to those jibes. It's socially acceptable to express that rage, even in sideways fashion, towards another male even if (and especially if) much of it is felt towards the female, at root.
Consider this: the fact that Smith struck another black man eliminates the race angle from Rock-vs-Smith. The fact that one wealthy, famous man struck another eliminates haves and have-nots from the same discussion. What are we left with? One entitled man, who knows he can get away with a lot, committing an act of violence; while another man reacts as graciously to that violence as can possibly be expected, and gets on with the show. Two men: one whose example is worth following, one whose is not.
My last comment has to do with civil war. I do not consider myself right-wing (or any wing; I try to embody the whole bird, thank you), but I regularly interact with people over the entire political spectrum on social media. Speaking of rage--the Right is already feeling a shit-ton of that over "the woke mob's" tendency to excuse the most heinous actions provided any politically correct pretense, with a special frosting of icy ire directed at Hollywood for its role in woke-narrative propagation. Imagine where it goes with THIS one: a Hollywood actor assaults another one on live camera and is not even escorted out of the building by security, much less arrested--no, they give him one of their top awards 15 minutes later...Now, I have been fearing that a civil war might break out in this country, at some point, for some time. But when I got wind of this story, I somehow began to feel that such a conflict is inevitable, or, at the very least, that the Right-Left, conservative-liberal divide is becoming an irreversible schism...one way or the other, our country, unless it offers opportunity as well as justice in equal measure to all its citizens, will end up definitively divided in two.
Will should get two for flinching, Chris didn’t flinch at all. Watch the video again and see if you see what I think I saw. 😎 Childish I know…
The very plausible possibility has been brought up more than once that Will Smith was reacting out of public humiliation for Jada's affair. It's plausible because a) who wouldn't feel that way? and b) it would explain the extreme rage that Smith displayed about a mild joke told by a comedian who is literally paid to roast people from the stage (and Will himself acknowledged in his speech that putting up with such ribbing is part of the job description). Someone "taking a poke" at his wife might on some level remind him of the affair. He might be enraged at her, but he twists it into being enraged at people who mess with her (especially other men).
Also, the fact that Will himself was laughing at the joke at first, and only reacted after Jada looked hurt, suggests a level of guilt & codependency on his part that might also go a ways toward explaining that rage--especially if those tendencies between them have been habitual. For women, it can be, as Robert Bly once put it, "so wonderful to have this fully grown male acting like a worm.". Anger can grow with every codependent interaction. Witness the jokes about Jada carrying Will's balls in her purse and suchlike...maybe there's something to those jibes. It's socially acceptable to express that rage, even in sideways fashion, towards another male even if (and especially if) much of it is felt towards the female, at root.
Consider this: the fact that Smith struck another black man eliminates the race angle from Rock-vs-Smith. The fact that one wealthy, famous man struck another eliminates haves and have-nots from the same discussion. What are we left with? One entitled man, who knows he can get away with a lot, committing an act of violence; while another man reacts as graciously to that violence as can possibly be expected, and gets on with the show. Two men: one whose example is worth following, one whose is not.
My last comment has to do with civil war. I do not consider myself right-wing (or any wing; I try to embody the whole bird, thank you), but I regularly interact with people over the entire political spectrum on social media. Speaking of rage--the Right is already feeling a shit-ton of that over "the woke mob's" tendency to excuse the most heinous actions provided any politically correct pretense, with a special frosting of icy ire directed at Hollywood for its role in woke-narrative propagation. Imagine where it goes with THIS one: a Hollywood actor assaults another one on live camera and is not even escorted out of the building by security, much less arrested--no, they give him one of their top awards 15 minutes later...Now, I have been fearing that a civil war might break out in this country, at some point, for some time. But when I got wind of this story, I somehow began to feel that such a conflict is inevitable, or, at the very least, that the Right-Left, conservative-liberal divide is becoming an irreversible schism...one way or the other, our country, unless it offers opportunity as well as justice in equal measure to all its citizens, will end up definitively divided in two.