"... counting the number of references to her being horny, feeling there were too many, but now thinking she’s good at them, so it’s the right number. And the 'Wicked' jokes were still fluid. Glaser was adding to things to obsess over. 'Do we have too many jokes about pedophiles?' she wondered. This wasn’t exactly the panic attack she had predicted. But Glaser said she had performed the jokes at clubs so often (91 times before the ceremony) that she could no longer tell if they were funny. How could she? She knew every surprise coming. She likened her relationship with her material to a marriage where she’s not gaga anymore. The jokes have been reliable, sure, but a political one that always kills recently bombed. That rattled her. 'Maybe it bums people out,' she said, sounding confused...."
Should a standup comedian reveal the inner workings like this? It can't make anything funnier for us, the audience. Eh, but who watches the Golden Globes? I used to, but now, I don't even know how to watch them. And I don't think I've even gone to the movies all year (other than to see that one documentary).
The political joke that always kills recently bombed — hmm. Wonder who that was about?
Do we have too many jokes about pedophiles? Are we suppose to experience that question as funny?
ADDED: I have one other post with the tag "Nikki Glaser," and it may shed some light on what sort of joke she might make about sex criminals. From March 28, 2022:
"Everybody called him a b----.... And who’s he hit? Me. [Someone] he knows he can beat.... She starts it … I finish it.... I got parents. And you know what my parents taught me? Don’t fight in front of White people."
The article also quotes this, about January 6th: "When did White men become victims? White men think they’re actually losing the country. Did you see the Capitol riots? What kind of White ‘Planet of the Apes’ s--- was that?"
The commenters at WaPo are mostly picking up on that — restating the point with the humor stripped out. The most-liked comment is: "Yes, this whole 'white men as victims' is the craziest crap I've ever seen, and I'm a 65-year-old white woman. White men were born on third base by the virtue of being white and male, and as soon as society starts gaining a little equality, white men lose their minds. It's disgusting and insane."
In one posted clip, apparently after the incident, Chappelle is heard to quip, “It was a trans man,” a reference to his own transphobic comments in his Netflix special The Closer and the uproar, protests and anger that ensued....
Another person caught the end of the show on video where Chappelle and Jamie Foxx, who apparently rushed onstage to help apprehend the man going after Chappelle....“I thought that was part of the show,” Foxx is heard to respond.
“I grabbed the back of that N*****’s head,” said Chappelle. “His hair was spongey!”
There are also reports that "Chris Rock, who performed earlier, came on stage w/ him & joked: 'Was that Will Smith?'"
After the Will Smith incident at the Oscars, there was a lot of talk about whether it would inspire other attacks on performers, whose vulnerability on stage had been so vividly exposed.
"This stated that there seems to be a correlation between the standard
of writing about a particular sport and the ball it utilizes -- that the
smaller the ball, the more formidable the literature. There are superb
books about golf, very good books about baseball, not many good books
about football or soccer, very few good books about basketball and no
good books at all about beach balls...."
Consider the ur-text of New Age golf writing, ''Golf in the Kingdom'' (1972), by Michael Murphy, a founder of Esalen. In the course of the book, the reader is introduced to a guru-like golf teacher named Shivas Irons, who spouts aphorisms like ''let the nothingness into yer shots,'' and is pelted with a boggling array of metaphors: golf as ''the new yoga of the supermind,'' golf as a recapitulation of evolution and golf as a Rorschach test of character....
Two recent novels -- ''The Legend of Bagger Vance,'' by Steven Pressfield, and ''Follow the Wind,'' by Bo Links -- give us Shivas wannabes, who tell their disciples to find their ''troo self.''... Perhaps sappiest of all is Jeff Wallach's ''Beyond the Fairway,'' a series of essays that purports to be a golf version of ''Zen in the Art of Archery'' when in fact it's closer to one of those business manuals that try to adapt the principles of Sun Tzu's classic ''Art of War'' to corporate back-stabbing....
Back to Kakutani (whose name is misspelled in the NYT scan of her ancient article):
Zen golf, [Wallach] writes, is ''a way of transporting yourself to a new dimension, gaining access to new perspectives, and maybe racking up a few birdies along the way.''
The problem with such passages isn't just the bad writing (which pretty much negates George Plimpton's famous ''Small Ball Theory'' that the smaller the ball the better the writing), the sanctimoniousness or even its startling trivialization of Zen. The problem is that such writing takes sport out of the lovely pure realm of the physical, where talent and strength and discipline are measured in unforgiving inches and lifetime stats, and plunges it into the warm recovery movement realm of subjectivity and self-esteem.
Little did Kakutani know, the very year she wrote, 1996, a new phenomenon would take over golf. Tiger Woods went professional that year, and just about ever since, the main thing about golf has been how is Tiger doing? An in-the-flesh icon overwhelmed the old hippie psychobabble of "The Legend of Bagger Vance."
Here's the video I found after I was watching a bit of the event live:
Did you hear the line? "I thought I was going to get to drive one of these [???] today." I hear "fuckers."
I'd just run into the live event on TikTok, and I was surprised at all the abuse the TikTok users were putting in the live comments. Here's a screenshot I took:
There was a very fast moving stream of comments. Very nasty. It's just by pure chance that the screenshot ends with "Where's Will Smith when you need him?"
I got some background on the event from Washington Examiner. Biden was talking about trucking as "a national priority, including improving training and employment standards." And apparently, back in 2017, Trump had an event where he was "photographed in the cab of an 18-wheeler Mack honking the horn and pretending to drive before a listening session with executives and their employees on healthcare," so that may have prompted Biden to express disappointment at not getting to sit in the truck. I'm guessing his handlers were afraid it might look weak rather than strong (like Dukakis in the tank).
Oh! I see the Washington Examiner fills in the blank with "suckers." You tell me. I think if you watch believing you'll hear "suckers," you will hear "suckers," but when I didn't have a text, I heard "fuckers" every time (and listened 10 times).
Said my son Chris, sending me this clip from Maher's March 25th show:
My response on watching that was: "Wow. That was very pro violence and for the wrong reason/I see your point re smith/And many people, especially women, supported smith."
One can't know if Will and Jada caught that episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher." I'm just saying that, watching the clip, I easily imagined them watching the show and then arriving at the idea that Will ought to stomp up on the stage and whack Chris Rock in the face.
Now, here's how Bill Maher talked about the incident on the new episode of his show, which aired last night:
"I just want to say to Will Smith: I got your back. April Fool's. You're a dick."
This is another piece in the NYT about Will Smith — it's by Melena Ryzik, Nicole Sperling and Matt Stevens — and I think it's worth reading, because it raises the more general problem of what happens to a person who chooses the strategy of niceness:
From his start as a goofy, G-rated rapper and sitcom star through his carefully managed rise as a blockbuster action hero, Will Smith has spent decades radiating boundless likability. But his amiable image was something of a facade, he wrote in his memoir, noting that a therapist had nicknamed his nice guy persona “Uncle Fluffy.”...
Mr. Smith wrote that he had another, less public, side: “the General,” a punisher who emerged when joviality didn’t get the job done. “When the General shows up, people are shocked and confused,” he wrote in “Will,” his 2021 memoir. “It was sweetness, sweetness, sweetness and then sour, sour, sourness.”
I'm interested in the wages of niceness. You can try to be nice, but if it's a strategy — a means to an end — it's only going to work until you snap or — even if you never snap — it can fail because other people perceive you as phony or because they may rely on you to keep up the niceness charade while they proceed to take advantage of you more and more.
Remember the "Queen of Nice"? Who was that? Rosie O'Donnell? Ellen DeGeneres? Neither of them turned out to be very nice, and maybe deploying the "nice" persona made them even less nice than they'd have been if they'd gone ahead and been straightforward. And yet, where would they be if they hadn't played "nice"? Where would Will Smith be? Would he have been a big success in rap music if he hadn't taken the "goofy, G-rated" lane?
But most of that NYT article is about how he's hurt his family's brand, which was "rooted in his seemingly-authentic congeniality":
For several years, a growing branch of Smith family enterprises has adeptly delivered reality-style revelation and emotional intimacy across an expanding number of platforms. Beyond Mr. Smith’s acting career and his introspective, best-selling memoir, there is the popular “Red Table Talk” show on Facebook Watch, in which Ms. Pinkett Smith, their daughter, Willow, and Jada’s mother, Adrienne Banfield Norris, hold forth on everything from racial identity to workout routines to the Smiths’ unconventional marriage....
How they sold that "unconventional marriage" as part of a "goofy, G-rated" "congeniality," I don't know. I haven't been watching. I'm surprised by what counts as wholesome and mainstream sexuality these days.
“I think most people would give him the benefit of the doubt,” said [Jonathan] Murray, a co-founder of the production company Bunim Murray, which pioneered reality TV. “But it really will rest on whether we believe that he is authentically dealing with this.”
There's that word "authentic" again — used, again, not to mean actual authenticity, but the perception of authenticity. It's "seemingly-authentic" and "whether we believe" we're seeing authenticity. The authenticity can be completely phony baloney, but the question is, are we — the idiots on the sofa — buying it?
This is a story that hit the NYT about 30 seconds after I put up last night's café post. The café post, for me, says I'm down for the night, and I'll see you in the morning. Carry on the conversation without me.
I could see that the first comment brought up the story. Yeah, I know I can put a post on top of the café post. I do that occasionally. But I am not veering from my path because Will Smith did one more thing.
He'd like to control the narrative, and he chose this action. If I could see who advised him and hear how they gamed it out, I would be much more interested.
"... to physically remove the star over fears he was 'manic' and would cause an on-camera scene....
But according to TMZ, Oscars producer [Will] Packer told Smith he could remain at around 8pm, about 35 minutes after the slap and just five minutes before the actor won his first Academy Award for his role in King Richard....
Goldberg was not present at the Oscars and stressed that she was not speaking on behalf of the Academy's board of directors. 'I can't imagine what was going on back there, but I do know that the only person anybody should be focusing on is Will Smith,' she said."
"'Things unfolded in a way we could not have anticipated,' the academy said in a statement. 'We also recognize we could have handled the situation differently.' The revelation came after the academy’s board of governors met to initiate 'disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Smith for violations of the Academy’s Standards of Conduct, including inappropriate physical contact, abusive or threatening behavior, and compromising the integrity of the Academy.'"
WaPo reports.
The top-rated comment over there: "How hard is it to call security and walk him out like you would have done for anyone else walking on stage and committing an assault then sitting back down and yelling obscenities? The Academy failed, and does not need three weeks with lawyers to figure out what they should have done."
Second highest-rated comment: "The fact that he sat back down laughed clapped and partied all night with other Oscar winners and nominees says a lot. Disgusting."
I'm not buying "was asked to leave... but... refused." It was not a serious asking if he could just refuse!
"... but it has the stamina to dissect the psychic pain of a mogul in a made-to-measure Dolce & Gabbana tuxedo. It has the wherewithal to pause and consider the complexity of a powerful Black man who says that he was protecting his powerful Black wife, when society too often doesn’t have the patience to deal with anonymous Black folks just trying to get by...."
I got through the entire blogging day yesterday without mentioning Will Smith, but this morning, reading the comments in last night's cafe, I took the prompt to watch a clip of Joe Rogan talking about it.
That's a 15-minute clip. I still intend to watch the rest of it, but 5 1/2 minutes in, I found myself wondering what Ricky Gervais has said about the incident. Ricky is brilliant, and he's a stand-up comedian who's hosted awards shows and roasted the big stars. Here he is at the 2020 Golden Globes.
I would expect Ricky to defend the role of the comedian versus the stars, but all he did was one little thing, retweet this tweet from the British "Office" twitter feed that shows the tiniest clip from an old episode of the show:
"Let's go out with a bang. Let's have a laugh atyour expense — shall we? Remember: They're just jokes. We're all going to die soon. And there's no sequel."
Oh, but the "just jokes" defense — just jokes at the expense of the hyper-privileged — that's not going to work anymore. It's the Era of That's Not Funny, and the preening empaths are out there in force telling you never ever ever ever to joke about anything that's actually physically wrong with a person. Or something like that. Can we still laugh at bald men? At bald white women? Who knows? I'm guessing we've reached end of the entire tradition of comedians on stage at awards shows making fun of the stars for the amusement of the little people out there in the dark. Whoever they get to emcee will be telling the stars they are wonderful and beautiful. Will Smith smacked the comedy out of the whole show. Get all the jokes out ya fucking mouth, from now until the end of Hollywood.
"Everyone saw an assault take place. Everyone in the room with their own eyes. And then if you would have tuned in 20 minutes later, you would have never known that happened."
This is a big change from the usual post-Oscars complaint about the stars and all their activism. This time the complaint is about all their inactivism.
1. Shooting somebody is worse than hitting somebody in the face, but Trump was only verbalizing about an imagined event, and Will Smith actually hit somebody in the face.
2. Trump was joking, Will Smith was reacting to a joke and displaying utter humorlessness.
3. In Trump's shooting scenario, the victim isn't a specific person or type of person. It's just a shooting in the abstract, with no motive or victim. There's no implicit endorsement of violence. His point was that he is (or was) the recipient of unconditional love. Will Smith targeted a specific person and modeled a sort of behavior: When your woman is disrespected, you should strike out immediately and violently.
4. Fifth Avenue is a very conspicuous place, but the stage of the Oscars ceremony is even more conspicuous. Trump only thought of getting away with violence committed right before everyone's eyes. But Smith actually did it — strode onto the stage and hit Rock — showing an immense sense of privilege.
5. If Trump really did shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue, he would be prosecuted. Even if it was in self-defense, I think in NYC, he'd be prosecuted. But since Smith actually committed the act, we will get to see if he suffers any consequences. He didn't even get escorted out of the theater. He was handed an Oscar a little while later and allowed time to talk and talk about his feelings. So this is looking like the height of privilege.
Let me tell you something, it’s a very bad practice to walk up on stage and physically assault a Comedian. Now we all have to worry about who wants to be the next Will Smith in comedy clubs and theaters.
Here's Rock making the joke, Will chuckling, and Jada not amused, and then Will striding onto the stage and hitting/"hitting" Rock:
At 0:42, I felt sure what I'd seen was a fake "Hollywood" punch. Rock stood planted in position and even leaned his face forward, then — it seemed — threw his head back after the seeming contact.
And Rock recovered so quickly, still smiling, and chattered out "Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me." But if it was scripted, would he have said "shit"? I haven't been watching the Oscars in recent years, but back in the days when I used to care enough to live-blog the hours-long show, I had the tag "fleeting expletives" to keep track of the litigation that arose after Cher's saying "fuck" at the 2002 Billboard awards activated the FCC. Who can even remember what the Supreme Court ultimately did about that threat to free speech?
But when Will Smith got back to his seat and proceeded to yell "Keep my wife's name out ya fucking mouth! Keep my wife's name out ya fucking mouth!" it was hard to believe it was scripted. But, as I said, I don't know where we are with fleeting expletives these days, and maybe we are right where it would be scripted precisely because it would create the illusion that it was unscripted.
Then Smith wins the best actor Oscar, and we get to listen to his speech, which give us another chance to assess the real-or-fakeness of the punch/"punch"/slap/"slap":
But if he's such a great actor — do we really still believe the stars who get the statuette are "great actors"? — he should be able to sell a scripted acceptance speech with faux-sincere lines about his being a "river of love" or some such nonsense and to cry seemingly real tears of apology.
What makes me think it was real is that it makes Smith look bad. He looked ugly yelling "Keep my wife's name out ya fucking mouth!" And he overshadowed his own winning of the Oscar. Why would anyone do that? The best explanation is that he lost his temper. But exactly why did he lose his temper? I think we'd need to know more about his relationship with his wife. Remember he was laughing at the joke, and she was looking grim. The camera wasn't on them continuously, but I imagine she said something to him or gave him a look that meant you'd better act now or you are not a man.
Finally, it's sad that the Smiths aren't proud of Jada's hair. She boldly shaves it down to almost nothing and that's a way of expressing great confidence in one's own beauty. I'm seeing some articles talking about her alopecia, but if you go to that link, you'll see she has a thin line of baldness across the top, and it's something that would be hidden if she didn't shave her head. She's highlighting the beauty of her face and the elegant structure of her head. She's not like those women in Chris Rock's movie who spend so much time at the hairdressers, use harsh chemicals, and cause so much importation of human hair from India.
Jada Pinkett Smith could have had any wig she wanted. To go to the Oscars with a shaved head is to make a strong statement that you think this is your best look. Chris Rock said she could play in a sequel to "G.I. Jane," which means she could play Demi Moore's iconic role. Demi Moore is famously beautiful.
The best response to the joke would have been an imperious smile that meant: Yes, I know I am beautiful. Not: My husband will now punch you in the nose!
Colourism is a form of discrimination against dark-skinned people in favour of those with lighter skin from the same race.
It can lead to a lack of representation in film, TV and fashion, particularly in Hollywood and Bollywood, as well as discrimination at work or on dating sites, and even to serious health problems from skin bleaching creams.
Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who has made the NFL so uncomfortable with his discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brains of deceased players, suggests that Hillary Clinton’s campaign be checked for possible poisons after her collapse Sunday in New York.
Omalu, whose story was famously told in the movie “Concussion,” made the suggestion on Twitter, writing that he advised campaign officials to “perform toxicologic analysis of Ms. Clinton’s blood".... adding that his reasoning is that he does not trust Russian President Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee who has expressed admiration for Putin.
Putin, as The Washington Post reported, was implicated by a British inquiry in January in the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB operative, in London in 2006....
The article presents Omalu's idea as if it's another conspiracy theory, but I assume that poisoning is one of the threats the Secret Service is looking out for. Here's a Snopes article on the President's "food taster":
Whether food tasters are employed on behalf of U.S. presidents when they're away from the White House is a subject that the Secret Service refrains from officially commenting on, but it's something of an open secret that they are....
But it is known the Service goes to great lengths to scrutinise the source and the preparation of food served to US presidents whenever they eat out of the White House to ensure it is not tampered with.
And I wouldn't assume that Hillary Clinton hasn't had a toxicologic analysis of her blood. If she had, would she tell us? First, even though I don't like her general tendency toward secretiveness, I don't think it's good to hear details about the threat of poisoning. It might encourage someone to act and give hints on how to evade detection. But what if Hillary has been tested and Omalu's suspicious are correct: She has been poisoned. Would she tell us? Should she tell us? Would it be classified? Would we find out slowly through small doses of suspicion like Omalu's tweets? My suspicion is that we would find out only what is deemed politically useful to Hillary Clinton (at least up to a point where she withdraws from politics). But what would be politically useful? It's politically useful to waft a theory that Putin may be poisoning her. Her campaign has been trying to paint Trump as chummy with Putin, and a Putin plot to help Trump would bolster the hell out of that theory.
Omalu seems to be a sort of folk hero. A movie was made about him. The movie — "Concussion" — starred Will Smith. What an ideal vector for the Putin-is-poisoning-Hillary theory!
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