(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Leftists rushed to the defense of embattled actor Will Smith after 30-year-old clip of him mocking a bald man resurfaced online.
Shortly before winning the best actor Oscar on Sunday, Smith shocked viewers by assaulting presenter Chris Rock, a fellow black comedian, for making a joke about the short-cropped hairstyle of his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who suffers from alopecia.
“Keep my wife’s name out your f***ing mouth!’ Smith shouted twice after mounting the stage and slapping Rock.
But online footage quicky emerged pointing to Smith’s hypocrisy for playing the victim of a relatively mild and innocuous wisecrack.
While on the Arsenio Hall Show in 1991, Smith made a similar joke at the expense of Hall’s bass player, John B. Williams.
“Arsenio, they’ve got rules,” Smith said, pointing at the bass player. “He has a rule. The bass player, he has a rule—he’s got to wax his head every morning.”
“Awh these are jokes, c’mon,” he concluded.
Snopes, a left-leaning “fact-checking” site, rated the video as “miscaptioned” using a semantic technicality to dismiss the offense of the then-up-and-coming sitcom star.
“The video is real … however, there’s no evidence to suggest that this joke was directed at someone with alopecia,” the article reads.
Many are defending Smith after this clip went viral, saying he was just 22 and he didn’t mean any harm.
Others thought differently:
“Aw, these are jokes. C’mon.”
Chris Rock shared the same sentiment, Will.
— AdamInHTownTX (Not a Biologist) (@AdamInHTownTX) March 30, 2022
He was fine joking about someone else.. but could not handle it when the joke came about his family…. That too the joke was not bad…..
— sunita sethi (@sunitahousewife) March 28, 2022
Williams, the bass player, reacted to Smith’s recent actions at the Oscars in an interview with Rolling Stone.
“I didn’t take it seriously,” said the 81-year-old in his first interview since the 1991 exchange started going viral. “He was a comedian. He was the ‘Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.’ He was a rapper. I took it as a joke. I laughed it off.”
Smith rocketed to fame as the irreverent star of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which often used as a vehicle for its comedy the characters’ quirks and physical appearances—including the bald and overweight “Uncle Phil,” portrayed by the late James Avery.
