Chris Rock Explaining Why He Turned Down an Offer to Host the 2023 Oscars is Peak Chris Rock

Neilson Barnard. Getty Images.

The weirdest part of the Will Smith storming the Academy Awards stage to slap Chris Rock was, well, Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. But looking back on it, the second weirdest part was the way people questioned how Rock handled it. Like somehow he should've been prepared for having the presumptive Best Actor winner give him an oops upside the head in front of the entire motion picture industry. And had the perfect one-liner all chambered and ready to go for the eventuality. Like David Niven when a guy ran across the stage hanging brain:

Or Clint Eastwood after Sacheen Littlefeather accepted for Marlon Brando and spoke out about the way her people are represented in movies. That maybe hasn't aged all that well. But absolutely crushed in 1973:

As a matter of fact, Rock's first stand up show after the slap was in Boston. And ticket prices went off the charts from people expecting him to have a tight 20 on the whole subject, polished and ready for an audience. At a time when he still had to be figuring out what the actual just happened. Instead, he gave it a good leaving alone until he was ready to joke about it. 

And now he is. Even allowing for the fact that trying to do justice to a Chris Rock monologue is practically impossible if you weren't there, and reading it in a newspaper account is like hearing Pearl Jam on a xylophone, this bit was worth waiting for:

AZ Central - Chris Rock, the comedian who was famously slapped by actor Will Smith during the 2022 Academy Awards, said during his Sunday night show in Phoenix that he was asked to host next year’s award ceremony, an invitation he said he refused. …

Rock said returning to the award ceremony would be like asking Nicole Brown Simpson “to go back to the restaurant.” …

As Rock mentioned how a person could get famous for being a victim, someone in the crowd shouted, “Talk about it.”

Rock said that the hit from Smith hurt, referencing how Smith had played the boxer Muhammad Ali in a movie. 

“He’s bigger than me,” Rock said. “The state of Nevada would not sanction a fight between me and Will Smith.”

That is how you do that. Granted, I'd love to hear him do an hour on it, but if this is where he is in the writing process, so be it. This is how you handle this insane situation. Calling out the Academy for their bullshit on this. Being self-deprecating. Explaining why you wouldn't just "hit him back" like the internet imbeciles said. Above all else, producing laughs. Which is a damned sight different than Will Smith's insufferable, grandiose non-apology public apology. 

And get a load of the Academy asking him to host! (And to hear this article tell it, Rock also says he was offered a Super Bowl commercial too, but shot that idea all the way down too. Though they didn't explain what his joke was; only that it was "profane." Now we HAVE to hear it.) Imagine the balls on these entitled twats. The whole auditorium, from the nominees down front to the lesser beings in the back to the Academy members running the show back stage all sat on their hands and did absolutely nothing. Until Smith won for that movie no one has seen. Then they took those hands off their ass cheeks and used them to give Rock's assaulter and batterer a standing-O like what they'd just witnessed never happened. Now they want to have their moment where Rock comes out to the same applause by the same raging phonies who couldn't be bothered to kick Smith out of the place, like would've happened in any other theater in the country but that one on that night. 

Like I said, now that Chris Rock is finally talking about it, I'd love to hear more from him. There's not enough bad things that can be said about the whole lot of them. And if it takes 30 year old OJ Simpson-themed jokes to get his point across, I'm here for them.