Letter of the Day | It is hypocritical to support Will Smith

THE EDITOR, Madam:

The incident that took place at the Oscar Awards between Will Smith and Chris Rock has been dominating headlines. I have been reading the comments on Facebook, especially from Jamaicans, and I was surprised by the number of people that came out in defence and in support of Will Smith.

I personally didn’t see anything wrong with the joke that Chris Rock made about Jada because I did not know about her medical condition and maybe Mr Rock didn’t either. However, the joke was about how her bald head made her look like a character from a movie G.I Jane. The joke was specifically about her hair, not the reason behind it, so when people speak about Chris Rock making a joke about her medical condition, that is misleading and inaccurate. I can understand, when people say the joke was inappropriate now that we know that her head is bald because of medical reasons; however, before we come down too hard on Chris Rock, we ought to know if he had known about her condition before.

I was a bit taken aback by how supportive some people were of Will Smith’s actions. It seems as if most people condone violence, once there is a good reason, and for me that is totally unacceptable. People are saying that Will was in the right because he was defending his wife’s honour, so it leaves one to think that violence is OK once you are doing it in the name of love or defending a loved one’s honour. Before commenting, people should really think back at how many times we have unintentionally offended people, how many times we have said things which we wish we could take back. Misunderstandings are a part of life, human beings will always differ in views. If we resort to violence whenever these situations arise, can you imagine how much more chaotic the world would be?

How does a man making a bad joke about your wife equate to you smacking him in the face? And for all the people talking about him defending his wife’s honour, think about this, which honourable woman would feel good seeing her husband physically assault a man in front of thousands of people, for an inappropriate joke? Would Jada feel any less honourable if Will had used his thank you speech to tell her how beautiful she looks even with her G.I Jane hairstyle? Would he be any less of a man if he had approached Chris Rock off the stage and tell him that he had a problem with the joke?

Sometimes people talk and don’t even realise what they are condoning. If we say there is nothing wrong with Will Smith’s actions, we are telling the young men in society that this is how they should behave in certain situations to be considered a good man, defending your wife’s honour. I am even more disappointed in the Jamaicans that are sympathising with Will, it is hypocritical. Do you know how much of the violence in Jamaica is stemmed from revenge, a lot of the turf wars in our ghettos started as a result of someone feeling offended or someone defending a loved one. Some of the Jamaicans defending Will’s actions are some of the harshest critics when it comes to our crime problem and our inability to contain it. Don’t think because Will’s action did not involve any weapons that it is less violent than any other act of rage. We must pick a side, we support violence or not, we can’t support it when it seems to stem from love, but speak out against it, when we don’t know where it stems from.

Another hypocritical narrative being pushed is that celebrities have the right to get angry because they are humans too; yes, and they should be held to the same standards as regular humans. Would we be defending just a regular human being after seeing them slap a man in the face? Maybe we wouldn’t even inquire what was the reason behind it. If Will Smith had approached the situation the right way, Chris Rock would have had the opportunity to apologise and also learn from the situation.

G.T