Chris Rock Was Doing Necessary Work; Jesters Are As Important As Action Heroes

 

I lost my hair to disease. It broke my heart. I thought of suicide. I hid from people. I wear hats and scarves. I dread human interaction. I assume people just think of me as the bald woman. I cursed God. I've lived through many hard times and losing my hair pierced my heart differently than every other cross I've had to bear. Until it happens to you, you can't understand.
 
Some of it has grown back. Weirdly and ironically, the most enthusiastic hair regrowth area has been on my calves, the one place I used to shave regularly. The old hair was short, blond, almost invisible. The new hair is longer and reddish. After having lost my other hair, I can't bring myself to shave my legs any more, and now I look like a chimp from the knees down.

 

The hair on my head is still thin enough you can see my scalp through it. It breaks my heart. My eyelashes never grew back, although a lot of my eyebrows have. No eyelashes doesn't mean just looking weird. Road grit constantly gets caught in my eyes as I walk.

 

I think of Mike Nichols, hugely talented actor and director. He lost all his hair to a childhood illness, and was hairless most of his life. I guess his eyebrows were very small wigs. God bless him.

 

At the Academy Awards, Chris Rock mocked Jada Pinkett Smith's hair loss to alopecia. Will Smith, Jada's sort-of husband (they have an open marriage and both have had public affairs with others), mounted the stage and slapped Rock. And the nation is debating.

 

I'm here to say, as a woman who has lost her hair, that Chris Rock did exactly the right thing in making a brief, gentle joke about Jada's hair loss.

 

Again, my hair loss caused me to think about suicide. That's not a good thing. It's ridiculous. So what? I lost my hair. I'm not starving in Yemen. I'm not huddling in a cold, dark bomb shelter in Mariupol, not having had any water to drink for days, waiting to die, after having watched my city and my loved ones die.

 

Since I lost my hair, I have continued to work, to write, to love.

 

We need clowns. We need clowns to puncture what we take seriously.

 

Yes, I have laughed at funerals. Yes, I have laughed at all kinds of dark things.

 

If we didn't laugh at hard things, we'd go nuts.

 

Why can angels fly? Because they take themselves lightly.

 

There's so much more to be said.

 

Like this: Will Smith is 6 feet 2 inches tall. He is fit enough to have played Mohammed Ali in a movie. Chris Rock is shorter.

 

Will Smith and Chris Rock signed a contract. Chris Rock was there to entertain. Will Smith was there to be a celebrity and to laugh and smile at jokes at his expense.

 

Why must there be jokes at Will Smith's expense? Because he is a celebrity. Because he enjoys ridiculous amounts of money and power that the rest of us can only dream about. Because the arrogance and self-delusion that come with being a celebrity beg to be punctured. What kind of arrogance? Listen to Smith's acceptance speech when he won his Academy Award. He justified his violent attack on Smith and then quoted Anthony Quinn as Auda Abu Tayi in "Lawrence of Arabia." Abu Tayi boasts of himself, "I carry twenty-three great wounds, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I killed with my own hands in battle. I scatter, I burn my enemies' tents. I take away their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor! Because I am a river to my people!" Smith quoted *that speech.* What a self-aggrandizing clown. Smith's daughter, Willow, claims she can bend time.

 

These people need to be joked about. And they agreed to be joked about, because they showed up at the Oscars, and that is what happens there.

 

More: violence in response to words is almost always bad violence.

 

If Smith wants to beat up on someone he should travel to Moscow.

 

Hollywood giving Smith a standing ovation moments after he punched a comedian gives carte blanche to violent loonies everywhere who don't like a comic's performance.

And if a white man did what Smith did, we wouldn't be having this conversation. He would be under arrest and his career would be over. 

 

Please feel free to post genuinely funny jokes about hair loss, cancer, or nuclear war in the comments section. I could always use a good laugh.