Will Smith smacking Chris Rock at this Sunday’s Oscars ceremony remains the hot topic of conversation on social media as more celebrities and guests share their thoughts on the surprising (but not that surprising) incident. While some, like co-host Amy Schumer, continue to pretend that it was the most traumatizing event of their lives, others, such as Daniel Radcliffe, are “dramatically bored” by the overblown kerfuffle, which distracted from other meaningful conversations like celebrating Questlove and his collaborators’ Summer Of Soul win.
And while the actors are all seemingly aghast that a man from West Philadelphia would physically confront another man from Brooklyn (two places where such things are a fairly regular occurrence, to be honest), Will’s fellow rappers seem less distraught on the whole. While 50 Cent, Drake, Nicki Minaj, and others either expressed sympathy for Smith or made jokes about the slap, others like Lil Nas X trolled the hilarious overreactions by fans on Twitter who brought up weird and frankly unlikely hypotheticals to score woke points. Now, another member of that fraternity has weighed in.
Compton rapper The Game posted a long caption pointing out the hypocrisy of the Academy for launching a disciplinary investigation. “They didn’t even want to give it to him in the first place,” he posited. “He acted off impulse & imposed a slap down out of frustration & embarrassment on behalf of his wife. Most people with opinions on the situation don’t have a committed relationship let alone a marriage of over 20 years to weigh against his feelings in the matter. He’s human & comedy is not always an excuse to publicly humiliate people especially while sitting front & center. Although violence anywhere is & should always be depicted in a negative light, this was a lul ass slap in defense of a woman battling a very delicate health issue. I’ll close by saying, they don’t want us to be equal, never have & never will.”
Of course, it’s unsurprising that The Game would side with Will in this situation, considering he got in hot water for a similar situation at the Drew League a few years ago. But he also makes some strong points, especially in calling out how several prior winners, including Harvey Weinstein and Roman Polanski, were allowed to keep awards even after being investigated by police — and in Weinstein’s case, convicted — of way worse things than delivering a love tap to a fellow member during a live broadcast.
In any case, I’m probably with Harry Potter on all of this. There are way more important things going on in the world; maybe we should focus on those.