Peak Woke and "The Slap Heard Around the World"
Clifton Roscoe on woke backlash
It’s virtually impossible to escape talk about the incident between Chris Rock and Will Smith at Sunday’s Oscars. Rock told a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, from the stage. Will Smith got up from his seat, walked onstage, slapped Rock hard across the face, and then returned to the audience. They exchanged comments, and then Rock went on with the show. Normally this is the kind of thing John McWhorter and I might discuss, but we’ve pushed back our regularly scheduled conversation by a week. By then, this may well be old news.
Luckily, someone stepped up to the plate to put “the slap” in context, and that someone is TGS fan favorite Clifton Roscoe. As Clifton sees it, the Smith-Rock affair may speed along a backlash against progressive policies and attitudes that is already well underway. If Republicans perform as well as many people think they will in the midterms, we may see Clifton’s views confirmed.
And I am, of course, interested in what all of you have to say. Weigh in on woke backlash and “the slap” in the comments!
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I didn’t watch the Oscars, but I heard about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock on Sunday night. I couldn’t believe the initial news reports. It made no sense for Will Smith to do something so self-destructive on what should have been one of the best nights of his career. But the video didn’t lie. Will Smith had behaved badly in response to a lame joke.
Reactions to “The Slap Heard Around the World” have been all over the map. While some have condemned Chris Rock for an insensitive joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair, the consensus seems to be that Will Smith’s actions were inexcusable. Here’s an excerpt from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s response on his Substack page:
When Will Smith stormed onto the Oscar stage to strike Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife’s short hair, he did a lot more damage than just to Rock’s face. With a single petulant blow, he advocated violence, diminished women, insulted the entertainment industry, and perpetuated stereotypes about the Black community.
Kareem’s view reflects that of many other black people who were shocked by Smith’s actions. What does it say when even a highly successful black man with a nice-guy reputation can be so easily triggered into acting the fool at the worst possible time? My take is that Smith’s meltdown may add momentum to a cultural, ideological, and racial backlash that was slowly brewing before the George Floyd uprising but has gained momentum since then. It’s not hard to connect the dots and find signs of this backlash across America.
Progressive prosecutors, like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Kim Foxx in Chicago, Kim Gardner in St. Louis, and Alvin Bragg in Manhattan, are getting strong pushback against what many say are “soft on crime” policies. Chesa Bouldin in San Francisco and George Gascón in Los Angeles are facing recall efforts. Paul Howard lost his reelection bid in Atlanta and was replaced by a new prosecutor, Fani Willis, who has taken a tougher stance toward crime. Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore is facing federal felony charges. She's up for reelection this year, so who knows if she'll win a third term?
Black Lives Matter has been exposed as the farce many of us knew it was. We hoped it would fade away quietly, but it has imploded in response to a leadership vacuum and questions about how it handles its finances. New York State Attorney General Letitia James ordered the Black Lives Matter Foundation to stop seeking donations in New York in July of 2020. Her counterparts in California and Washington State have taken similar actions.
Public support for BLM has been fading since the summer of 2020. People who bought into the concept that black lives matter were turned off by the civil unrest, riots, and looting that took place across America. Here’s a deep dive into polling data that illustrate the trend.
The NAACP and the National Urban League are still raking in cash, but not many people are paying attention to them. Their legislative priorities (e.g. policing reforms, criminal justice reforms, new federal voting rights laws) have stalled out in Washington, and Republicans at the state level are passing laws they oppose. These include allowing citizens to carry concealed firearms without permits, new voting integrity laws opponents say are voter suppression laws, and bills that give parents more visibility and input into what’s being taught in publicly-funded K-12 schools.
Mayors have felt the pushback as well. Keisha Lance Bottoms grew weary of the fight and decided not to seek a second term as Atlanta’s mayor. Andre Dickens, Atlanta’s new mayor, has managed to fend off an attempt by Buckhead residents to form their own city. He has sent a clear signal that he understands their concerns about crime and will take steps to address them. Jenny Durkan decided not to seek a second term in Seattle. Bruce Harrell, a black man who promised to address Seattle’s crime and quality of life issues, replaced her.
A referendum to disband Minneapolis’s police department and replace it with a vaguely defined new public safety department was voted down, even though preliminary polling suggested it would be approved. Some of Minneapolis’ most “woke” city council members were voted out of office. Mayor Frey, who at one point seemed to be on the side of “defund the police” activists, is singing a different tune today. So is London Breed in San Francisco. Eric Adams won New York City’s mayoral election by positioning himself as an ex-cop who’s tough on crime. Mayors around the country, including those in “progressive” cities, are being forced to respond to crime and quality of life issues they ignored before.
K-12 education is a flashpoint as well. Several “woke” members of San Francisco’s school board were recently recalled because they seemed to be more interested in renaming schools than getting kids back into classrooms. Glenn Youngkin’s pushback against "woke" school boards contributed to his successful gubernatorial campaign in Virginia. He and Winsome Sears, Virginia’s new lieutenant governor, are unapologetically right-of-center.
This article from The Hill suggests that some progressive candidates are shying away from the term “progressive” and are now calling themselves “populists.” Here’s an excerpt:
They’re pushing for environmental reforms, embracing single-payer health care and calling for more government assistance. But increasingly, many are reluctant to call themselves “progressives.”
Left-wing candidates from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to Missouri are shying away from the P-word on the campaign trail, in messaging and online fundraising, and even in media blitzes, signaling an attempt to rebrand their wing of the party as Democrats debate how to win the midterm elections.
All the above suggests that we hit “peak woke” somewhere between the second half of 2020 and the first half of 2021.
There will be consequences for both “the slap” and “peak woke.” The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents Hollywood actors, have opened investigations into what happened Sunday night.
There's a lot of speculation about the potential consequences of “the slap.” Will Smith is unlikely to face criminal charges or lose his Oscar. His reputation will take a hit (pun intended) and AMPAS will “punish” him, but these things are unlikely to derail his career. Chris Rock's stock will rise. People respect the way he handled himself. His new tour is off to a good start and ticket sales are strong. AMPAS is in a box. They've been criticized for mishandling the incident. Will Smith crossed a very bright line in a very public way. AMPAS has to show that even an Oscar winner will face consequences when they misbehave this badly.
November's midterm elections will tell us a lot about the political implications of “peak woke.” Democrats are bracing themselves for big losses, but Republicans can still screw things up.
Best regards,
Clifton Roscoe
Something Smith rapid resort to totally needless violence has further revealed is the stunning lack of basic moral intuition and coherent values among some of the highest profile and most highly compensated talking heads, people who are granted huge mainstream platforms to sanctimoniously lecture the public. Look at the contrast between the clueless attempts at equivocating apologetics by Gayle King and the fiery but plainspoken eloquence of Jim Carrey who appeared genuinely startled and outraged at King’s take. Don’t these seven figure a year celebrity hosts routinely posture and condescend to the rest of us about their deep wisdom and moral clarity? Then, predictably, the usual suspects at the braintrust known as The View, unleashed one bafflingly bad take after another. Joy Behar, for example: Will Smith must be carrying some sort of hurt, so we can and should really try to understand that first and foremost. I don’t know the name of the guest who set them straight but she was fantastically effective. The blank, helpless stares of the regular hosts said it all. USA Today published a bit of self-parody from some obscure exemplar of the “silence is violence, any words I don’t like are violence - but actual violence, at least by people of my group/on my side is awesome” left. And the always bad faith Jemele Hill promptly produced a column trying to racialize and smear criticisms of Smith’s behavior. A few right of center talking heads (Piers Morgan) tried out a retrograde defense: real men immediately stand up and attack anyone who says a word about their women. And plenty of meme-addled nitwits made comments mocking Smith for his “wife’s boyfriends”. But most people - regular people, people without seven-figure/year entertainment deals seemed to retain their own common sense moral clarity. While the response by attendees and officials at the Academy Awards ceremony revealed a culture and institution so profoundly morally confused and hypocritical they embraced, consoled, and lustily cheered the attacker. Wasn’t there some kerfuffle a couple years back - something with a hashtag? - about supporting victims and no longer protecting abusers within the industry - however famous or influential they might be? Was Will Smith simply too big to condemn, confront, remove from the ceremony? I’m not entirely sure of the answer to this question, but given the recent obsession in Hollywood with superficial diversity mandates, was Will Smith simply too high-profile a black celebrity to call out and hold accountable? Would a black actor known for conservative views been treated the same way as Smith? How would a prominent white actor been treated if he’d behaved that way? It’s virtually certain he’d have been engulfed in shocked boos and hustled off stage. We’d hear immediately and nonstop about toxic masculinity and the white privilege he exhibited in knowing he could violently attack someone in public over mere words. We’d be treated to nonstop recitations of what’s wrong with boys and men in our culture and what we must do to put all of these violently entitled white men in their place. And yet it was considered OK by many in the #MeToo crowd the cheer and apologize for a much larger man attacking a comedian - over a dumb joke he’d at least initially reacted to with a perhaps awkward ambivalent laugh. How hard would it have been for Smith to simply stare back at Chris Rock, shake his head in disapproval and mouth “Not Cool”.
Even if the larger media-entertainment consensus shifts on the second or third try to clear-eyed condemnation, they can’t undo the damage Smith’s behavior and their own morally confused reaction caused. Will Smith is one of those comfortingly familiar celebrities so many of us grew up with. Whatever his Hollywood eccentricities, many of us had considered him a decent model of how to carry oneself as a grown man. Our society has unraveled enough over the past couple of years of lockdown stress-induced antisocial behavior and seeming acceptance of violent public disorder. We already have far too many boys and girls who seem to feel justified in lashing out violently at the slightest imagined or invented provocation. Will Smith, at his literal and figurative stature, with all the influence and goodwill he enjoys, seemed one of the last people who’d so feel so threatened he’d feel compelled to attack someone over so little. But that he felt emboldened to do so - an almost impunity, confirmed by the reception his self-righteous and self-pitying acceptance speech received
(we attack people out of love?) is a disturbing reflection of a frivolous, morally preening yet unmoored culture. A larger man strode up to a smaller man on stage, on TV, and attacked over almost nothing - and was embraced by colleagues and bathed in cheers. The crowd’s first and strongest instinct was toward fawning over the bullying and would be humiliation of the physically weaker man by his showboating antagonist. But yes: even more dramatic confirmation that these performatively more-virtuous-than-thou elite institutions are largely populated by moral idiots who can’t pass as simple a test as distinguishing victim from attacker when it happens right in front of their faces.
Like a twitter thread come to life, what we saw at the Oscars was a physical manifestation of the antipathy toward free speech that's been percolating.