And The Oscar Goes To… The American Nervous Breakdown

Will Smith and Chris Rock's fight is part of a broader problem. Americans need to calm the f**k down or pay the price for our unsubstantiated rage.

Bradley Cooper attempts to calm Will Smith after slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. Image: AP

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – Don’t worry. This isn’t about what happened at the Oscars. Unfortunately, however, the confrontation between Will Smith and Chris Rock is yet another example of what I’ve been referring to as the American Nervous Breakdown.

At some point in recent history, American society skewed off on a tangent in which our national sense of empathy and rationality was erased, muted. Perhaps it can be traced all the way back to 9/11 or the 2000 election. Or maybe it occurred when Donald Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president in middle 2015. 

Irrespective of its starting point, the American nervous breakdown is in full swing today, and we can see it everywhere: people losing their minds over trivial grievances and disagreements. Start with Will Smith smacking an Oscar presenter because of a dumb, dated reference to a movie from 1997, literally a quarter-century ago. By the way: bald woman jokes stopped being funny about two minutes after GI Jane hit theaters. But it’s an Oscars crowd-pleaser, I suppose easily entertained people still remember Demi Moore shaving her head for a role in which she’s attempting to become the first woman Navy SEAL. (A woman trying to become a Navy SEAL? The jokes practically write themselves, don’t they? Sarcastic eye-roll emoji.)

That aside, we’re all well aware of the other examples. We’ve seen it in department stores with a series of so-called “Karens'' accosting employees and other customers. We’ve seen gun fetishists engaging in mass shootings with greater and greater frequency. We’ve seen the breakdown manifest itself on airplanes with completely unhinged freakouts over mask mandates. Hell, the entire Red Hat response to the pandemic – the gratuitous ignoring of common sense protocols, the physical assaults of Asian-Americans, the emotional indifference to thousands of Americans dying every day from a preventable illness, the delusional Don’t Look Up attitude – it’s all disturbing and disillusioning examples of the breakdown. The election of a sinister con-man in response to obvious Russian propaganda was a big one.

Our political discourse has become a minefield in which officials and opinion-makers alike aren’t merely disagreed with or debunked, but physically accosted in restaurants and at places of work. Jesse Watters from Fox News helped make this a thing by stalking noncombatants like school principals in parking lots or in their driveways. Doxing and defamation lawsuits often become the endgame in political debates, with groups like Project Veritas employing frivolous defamation lawsuits called “SLAPP” suits to intimidate and silence critics while scrubbing the digital record of negative comments.

Meanwhile, militia cosplay groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the Boogaloo Bois are routinely seen on video fighting protesters near public buildings. The January 6 insurrection is a colossal example of the breakdown. The perpetrators, including Donald Trump himself, lost sight of what it means to live in a democracy where we’re supposed to settle political and social disputes using words and votes. Instead, policy disagreements escalate into fist fights, while dissatisfaction with election results led hundreds of gullible, racist Americans, subjects of the aforementioned con-man, to invade and occupy the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn a democratic election.

What Will Smith did to Chris Rock was not an outlier. This is how too many of us solve problems these days. It’s no wonder given our nation’s long history of settling disputes at the point of a gun, from our wars to our westward expansion and all points between. I suppose that’s why a new poll shows that a narrow majority of Americans believe Will Smith was right to slap Chris Rock over a lame joke. According to Democratic pollster Blue Rose Research:

52.3 percent of those surveyed view Rock in the wrong while 47.7 percent fault Smith. The results did not include respondents who were undecided… All age demographics below 65 years also viewed Rock in the wrong, while 51.8 percent of those above 65 years old said Smith was wrong… Females surveyed faulted Rock while 52.4 percent of males surveyed viewed Smith in the wrong.

Decide for yourself what the demographic results mean, but the upshot here is that Americans are mostly with the man who decked Chris Rock – again, because of a crappy joke. The poll result itself, provided it’s accurate, is the American Nervous Breakdown. It’s the same line of kneejerk entitlement that makes us want to ignore a deadly pandemic because we’re tired of it, despite the continued death toll and inevitable variant spikes.

In the context of cancel culture, I believe comedians and opinion-makers have a right to free speech. I also believe their audiences do, too. The man or woman on stage isn’t the exclusive beneficiary of the free speech clause in the First Amendment. Comedians and others have the right to say whatever they’d like to say, but so does the audience, including its condemnation and shaming of what the comedian (or whomever) says.

But this prong of the American Nervous Breakdown is something different. Call it “Confrontation Culture,” for lack of a better term. No one has the right to assault someone else over words, ideas, or jokes – unless those words, ideas, or jokes are accompanied with violence. So in the case of the Oscars, no – Will Smith had no right, legally, morally, or otherwise, to clobber Chris Rock. Now, if Rock had punched Smith, it would’ve been game on. But that didn’t happen. (There’s a separate discussion to be had about toxic masculinity, which was also a component. I discussed it on my Tuesday Bob Cesca Show podcast this week in case you’re curious. To paraphrase Ted Lasso: we need a little more womaning-up because manning-up just isn’t working.)

The question now is whether we can reverse course before the American Nervous Breakdown worsens. We could use some national therapy – maybe some time to heal from the virally contagious mayhem all around us. We need to reacquaint ourselves with empathy and rationality – hell, the old count-backwards-from-10 trick at the very least. More acts of kindness, and fewer acts of assholery. It won’t solve the problem, but it might cool some tempers. If someone’s wrong on the internet, or on the Oscars stage for that matter, maybe we should pick our battles and let it go – quietly move on instead of making that wrong person physically pay for being wrong, be that through punches, slaps, lawsuits, or ammo. Americans need to calm the fuck down or pay the price for our unsubstantiated rage.

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How Ukraine Used Muhammed Ali's Rope-A-Dope Strategy To Smash Putin

Muhammed Ali defeated George Foreman in one of the most masterful displays of strategy ever seen in the boxing ring. Ukraine is doing the same to Russia.

Ali knocks out Foreman in1974, Kinshasa, Zaire. Image via AP

by Ben Cohen

When Muhammad Ali fought George Foreman on Oct. 30, 1974 in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Congo), no one expected him to win. The brash boxer from Louisville, Kentucky, was 32 years old and suspected of being on the decline. He was coming off a hard fought decision win over Joe Frazier, and had barely got past Kenny Norton in a fight many thought he deserved to lose. Ali had lost much of his famous foot speed, didn’t carry huge power, and had told the press he would be retiring after the fight.

In George Foreman, Ali was facing one of the most intimidating champions the sport had ever seen. Foreman was 25, unbeaten, and had knocked out 37 of 40 opponents — most of whom were rendered unconscious inside the first two rounds. Foreman was inhumanly strong and such an awesome puncher that no one wanted to hold the heavy bag for him, let alone face him in a ring. The Texas born fighter was a wrecking machine coming off ruthless demolitions of Frazier and Norton who both were pulverized in two short rounds. Frazier was hit so hard by one punch that his feet literally left the floor. “The word ‘murderous’ doesn’t quite apply,” journalist Norman Mailer said of Foreman’s prowess. “He was awesome.” …..Continue reading here.