According to the article, Chris Rock had the joke about the documentary nominees ready to go the night before.
"In response to someone on Twitter who said Rock must have been scrambling for a joke while still reeling from the slap, Patel pointed to the comedian’s comments from the night before, when he said he planned to say that exact thing if “Summer of Soul” won.
At a pre-Oscars jam hosted by The Roots ahead of the ceremony, Rock addressed Thompson, “I’m presenting the documentary Oscar tomorrow … I’m gonna say Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson and three white guys. Oh, you know I’m going to say it, too … ”
I’m not giving Rock a free pass but geez, if any public “critics” want to start dissecting each moment of the show they better buy a couple of notebooks and a fresh box of pencils cause the content is going to be enormous.
Again no free passes, but this is ONE night, one public event - the criticism can be sliced and diced for eternity just focusing on entertainment award shows!
The number of people that follow Joseph Patel could almost fill a high school gym. One would think that a person in show business would understand that people are more likely to be watching someone with millions of followers like Chris Rock than Joseph Patel.
Patel’s comments are just typical elitist stuff like “How can you sully my moment that is so historic?” No one cares, Joe. Did you do anything to intervene in the Will Smith situation?
This was from the actual injured party. I’m 100% sure that if this Oscar winner was related to any of us somehow, our child/husband/brother, we would have been livid on their behalf to have had their deserved big moment completely ruined by these two men.
Sounds like Questlove or Patel could have given a heads up they didn’t like the joke the night before if Chris Rock said at the jam that’s what he was going to do. And,isn’t there an announcer that read all 4 names as they walked to the podium to accept the award?
Livid? We have the Russian invasion of Ukraine right now, millions of people are hurting for no reason, that’s the situation to be livid about, but to be livid in something so minor, goodness gracious, are we spoiled or what?
First of all, we don’t stop being happy, being sad, being angry, being anxious, being nervous, having trivial concerns because there is a war in Ukraine. There is ALWAYS something horrible happening here and in the world at large and there always will be horrible things happening. That doesn’t mean we won’t always have trivial concerns.
Secondly, I did not say I am livid, I said that if this happened to someone I loved, I would be livid.
Yes, also true. But even without CR’s joke, the behavior by Will Smith really took away from a moment that was really important to these people. I had wondered what they had thought about it, and now we know how at least one of the parties felt.
The “Slap” completely overshadowed the Oscars and all of the other deserving people there. I’m starting to see articles talking about how the Hosts, other award winners, and the Oscars producers felt about it as well. Very few of them were neutral.
Some people have no empathy and find stuff like this to be funny. I’m probably guilty of having too much empathy.
At the end of the day, this will all blow over. CR seems to be emerging as the sympathetic figure in this. What remains to be seen is if there will be any repercussions of any significant nature for WS.
I feel bad for all involved. Hosts, producers, award winners, everyone who put in a lot of time, effort, planning, etc to make the night a success. All overshadowed by an event that lasted about a minute and wasn’t even part of the purpose of the night. But that happens sometimes. Events are often remembered for one smart part (good or bad) with the rest being pushed to the back. And with the Oscars themselves, outside the best actor/actress/movie and maybe director, do many people care about the rest of the awards?
I have empathy for a lot of things in the world. But its on something of a sliding scale. And livid is a pretty high hurdle. One that I don’t think anything that happened on Oscar night would be able to clear (at least for me).
I actually noticed that this was a pretty sh*tty joke right when it happened. But I have to admit, Patel’s comments do not come across as sympathetic to me, I think he’s now part of the problem. It was rude to say, “Questlove and 3/4 white guys”; it’s so dismissive of the winners besides QL, and it doesn’t even matter to me that Patel isn’t white…he should be equally offended on behalf of his coworkers Robert Fyvolent and David Dinerstein, who appear to actually be white. That he only focuses on himself in this interview, and not on the fact that Fyvolent and Dinerstein were also belittled, I’m inclined to think Patel is not a very team-oriented thoughtful guy. It was a rude joke to all of them, that diminished their win, not just Patel because he’s South Asian. It’s certainly not the way any of us would want to be introduced during our big moment.