Awards Season 2021

[knives]

That may well be, but you don’t see Beck slapping people around.

[hearthesilence]

Interesting, but unfortunately "my bat-shit insane cult made me do it" doesn't really help the matter either.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar posted this yesterday, but I didn't catch it until now. A pretty thorough takedown.

[reaky]

That may well be, but you don’t see Beck slapping people around.

1 Isn’t he an ex-Scientologist? 2 He’s tiny.

[knives]

That’s what I get for trying to mention someone who’s not Tom Cruise or John Travolta.

[domino harvey]

Interesting, but unfortunately "my bat-shit insane cult made me do it" doesn't really help the matter either.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar posted this yesterday, but I didn't catch it until now. A pretty thorough takedown.

Great piece, thanks for sharing

[knives]

I really enjoyed it as well. It’s typically thoughtful and kind hearted to all perspectives.

[OldBobbyPeru]

Really interesting thread by Max Burns on Twitter. Chris Rock not being a Scientologist, as far as I know, it suggests Smith was taking his indoctrination into the lay arena. A few excerpts:

Will Smith almost certainly went through the Scientology courses that teach you to unapologetically use slaps and physical force to let a fellow Scientologist know they've done something wrong.

There's a Scientology course, I guess you'd call it, that involves slapping/physically humiliating fellow Scientologists in a group setting as a means of exerting superiority. It is *remarkably* common within the cult.

Under Scientology, Smith's slap of Rock was the *only* acceptable response to what Rock did. In Scientology, inaction over disrespect is in itself grounds to get yourself slapped by a higher-ranking Scientologist.

And Smith certainly feels he did right.

https://twitter.com/themaxburns/status/ ... Ow-WxmHxCg

I'm sorry for this, but the idea of a Scientology course that teaches slapping made me think of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kswOS1YfmPM

[OldBobbyPeru]

The whole thing's already festered too much. Now you have people like Sienna Miller disgustingly applauding that course of action without qualification. I keep thinking back to teachers who saw a spike in bullying in the wake of Trump's election, a reflection of the approval given to his behavior (even if it's only a minority of the country). I'm just so thoroughly disgusted.

I feel like this too. It's depressing, and the whole thing feels like an example of the civility we've lost. People can't behave on airplanes, there's an increase in pedestrians being mowed down, murders are way up. Sometimes I feel as though we've become a nation of entitled sociopaths.

[therewillbeblus]

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar posted this yesterday, but I didn't catch it until now. A pretty thorough takedown.

Loved reading this, best response I’ve read yet, and so valuable to be coming from another incredibly important black public figure

[captveg]

From the files of "the internet has the longest possible memory" comes this 30-year-old Arsenio Hall clip where Smith jokes about a bald band member, then justifies it to the audience saying it was "just a joke". (Video claims the band member has alopecia, but this is unverified).

The fact that this exists kinda blows my mind.

[Finch]

Indiewire report that ticket sales for Chris Rock's world tour skyrocketed overnight compared to the previous month's total. I say good on him. His joke was shit but he handled this entire thing with a lot more class than Will Smith.

[therewillbeblus]

I still think the joke was funny

[therewillbeblus]

From the files of "the internet has the longest possible memory" comes this 30-year-old Arsenio Hall clip where Smith jokes about a bald band member who apparently had alopecia, saying it was just a joke.

The fact that this exists kinda blows my mind.

The internet never forgets. I hope this makes the rounds and gains enough publicity where Smith needs to address it again

[swo17]

Not sure how much this particular point matters, but what evidence is there that that band member had alopecia?

[captveg]

Not sure how much this particular point matters, but what evidence is there that that band member had alopecia?

Fair point. I'll update my phrasing.

[knives]

That seems to be John Williams, no relation, who has never said if he has the disease or not.

[Mr Sausage]

Male pattern baldness is a form of alopecia (androgenic alopecia).

[Walter Kurtz]

At lunch, I passed by a bald man singing some hip hop on the street----

Anybody make fun of me
Gonna have some CTE

Over and over. With some boom box background music.

[Walter Kurtz]

Come to think of it... there's a pretty darn good movie about CTE called Concussion. Will Smith oughta check it out.

[Michael Kerpan]

Pretty much every opinion piece by KAJ I've ever read has been spot on. This was no exception. What an impressive man he is.

[therewillbeblus]

Male pattern baldness is a form of alopecia (androgenic alopecia).

'Guess I have alopecia!

[domino harvey]

Not sure how much this particular point matters, but what evidence is there that that band member had alopecia?

Isn’t it an exact parallel to Rock then, who also didn’t know but just told a joke? However, I don’t find this clip compelling evidence— people change a lot as they age, I don’t need to judge Smith on anything older than what happened all of two days ago

[swo17]

Agreed

[therewillbeblus]

Not sure how much this particular point matters, but what evidence is there that that band member had alopecia?

Isn’t it an exact parallel to Rock then, who also didn’t know but just told a joke? However, I don’t find this clip compelling evidence— people change a lot as they age, I don’t need to judge Smith on anything older than what happened all of two days ago

Exactly, which is the root of the problem with canceling people for behavior from 30 years ago under the philosophy that the culture then should have been how it is now and therefore everyone had the opportunity to access our current worldviews, and shame on them for not doing that (which is a difference between still shaming awful behavior from 30 years ago and holding people accountable under the evolution of where we've come to collectively now). It's not "evidence" but since this is the rabbit hole of antihumanist diagnoses we assign today, exposing this "hypocrisy" towards a figure who seems un-cancellable might actually do some good in holding up a mirror to our society as a whole. I don't think it'll create a revolution, but Will Smith's clear privileges in the eyes of society do provide an opportunity for us to evaluate how we're assessing people and formulating our subjective truths as objective ones with competing forms of 'information' (rather than "evidence" towards a rigid perspective). Sitting with two incongruous things, acknowledging them, and arriving at a position, will move us back towards critical thinking, maybe

[RIP Film]

Pretty much every opinion piece by KAJ I've ever read has been spot on. This was no exception. What an impressive man he is.

I wonder how many agree with The 3 most Disappointing Movies of 2021 are Best Picture Nominees! I know I do.