by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Now that we’ve all had a few days to process what happened, it seems as though pretty clear that Will Smith and Jade Pinkett Smith have a unique relationship. All of the hot takes influenced by racism and identity politics obscure how fucked up what happened was.
The reason why The Slap is so shocking is if you simply take what happened at face value without applying any particular agenda to it — Will Smith was way out of line.
But it’s difficult for us to come to that conclusion because of racism on one end of the spectrum and identity politics on the other. Or, put another way, as I’ve said before, because there is no “center” anymore, it seems as though the African American community wants to handle this as a family matter and, as such, they’re defending Smith even though we all saw what happened with our own two eyes.
And that’s a totally valid thing to do.
I don’t know. The broader implications of The Slap continue to be processed. It’s just sad that the same problems that led to the rise of MAGA are also muddling the waters to such an extent that it’s difficult for any broad consensus to be developed as to What It All Means.
