Most people are understandably still talking about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock in the face at last week's Oscar ceremony, after Rock made a tasteless joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's hair (she has alopecia or hair loss). What Smith did was wrong, no doubt, but thinking back about that broadcast, I'd say that incident was the least of the Oscar ceremony's problems:
1. First, what Smith did was indeed not noble but wrong. We parents spend a lot of time teaching our little children to use words not hands to express their anger, however justified it might be. An actor resorting to violence on a world-wide stage sends out a very bad message.
2. Smith did also use words to express his outrage at Rock, shouting "Keep my wife's name out of your fucking mouth" to Rock several times. Unfortunately, we here in America were deprived of hearing that. ABC, ever fearful, like other broadcast networks, of FCC (Federal Communication Commission) fines, bleeped out the offensive tirade. (Fortunately, it was heard in Australia and other places with less repressive regimes than the United States.) And it also must be noted: the FCC does absolutely nothing about Fox News and its dissemination of outright lies about COVID and now the Russian invasion of Ukraine -- lies so grievous that it got Chris Wallace not to his contract with Fox, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to recommend Fox News. Surely, those lies are not broadcasting "in the public interest" -- the lies about Covid vaccines and bogus "cures" have literally cost lives. And maybe the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) should investigate the very name Fox "News" as a form of false advertising.
3. Speaking of COVID and the Russian invasion, neither received much mention at the Oscar ceremony. COVID was actually the subject of an early joking skit. Ok, but the pandemic is no laughing matter to the more than six million people around the world who lost their lives, and the millions more in their families. Would've been appropriate to say something about COVID in the Oscar "In Memoriam" segment.
4. The same egregious oversight about the heroic Ukrainians fighting for their very lives and country marred the Oscar event. Sean Penn suggested that Ukrainian President Zelensky be allowed to address the world via the Academy Awards ceremony. Not only did that not happen, there was no official mention of the Russian attack of Ukraine at all, other than some silent words briefly up on a screen. Ukrainian-born Mila Kunis alluded to but didn't mention by name the savage Russian invasion of her birth place. Were the presenters and winners told not to mention Ukraine? It was left to Francis Ford Coppola to defiantly proclaim from the stage, "Viva Ukraine"!
All in all, though there were many very worthy winners, a sad shambles of an award ceremony
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