WEBSTER's defines it as "wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate." TV used to define it as MY MOTHER THE CAR, anything guest starring Charo and crooked public figures trying to pretend otherwise (see especially interviews with Watergate crooks Chuck Colson, G Gordon Liddy and Richard Nixon).
Use to.
Not anymore. These days what was once rightly considered absurd is now passed off as normal.
You saw it with the Academy Award broadcast last week where actor Will Smith ran up on stage as Best Documentary was being presented (SUMMER OF SOUL would win) to assault Chris Rock and then, once he'd taken his seat, to scream (more than once) curse words at Chris. It was absurd and it was appalling. As was Will Smith not being ejected from the proceeding immediately.
That latter part grew even more absurd.
Former actress and forever pushy, big mouth Whoopi Goldberg decided to weigh in -- and goodness knows that woman throws around a lot of weight despite doctor's orders to reduce (she's diabetic). She threw her weight around, in fact, all last week on THE VIEW. Now it's not uncommon for Whoopi to lecture at length. Not uncommon at all. It's not uncommon for her to have her facts wrong. It's not uncommon for her to be an embarrassment. And she certainly managed to live up to her bad reputation. She was outrageous as she minimized Will Smith's behavior and she was outrageous as she failed to look into the camera and apologize to Chris Rock.
Apologize to Rock?
Yes. She's a blabber mouth and she elected to be one on this topic. She shouldn't have. She shouldn't have said one word about it. The Academy Awards has launched an active investigation into the incident -- which is what happened -- including the Academy's feeble response the night of the broadcast.
Why does Whoopi need to keep her mouth closed? She's a single term member of the Academy's Board of Governors.
We hard from many members as Whoopi broadcast more lies than even P-Diddy (who was also Team Will and also felt the need to lie repeatedly, but at least he's not serving on the Board of Governors).
With an ongoing investigation taking place, the last thing any member of the Board of Governors needs to be doing is discussing this incident. That could be seen as an attempt to manage/influence the outcome of the investigation.
And Whoopi is someone who could be called out in the investigation.
B-b-b-but she didn't strike Chris Rock!!!!
No, but she didn't act either.
Her duties include ensuring the safety of everyone present. That's what the Board is supposed to do. After Will Smith attacked Chris Rock, who knows what could happen next. Who might he go after next?
And just having an assailant like Smith in the audience was traumatic and triggering for many people in attendance.
Grasp that.
People who have been assaulted and abused (and both include Chris Rock) had to sit in the audience with a man who was too stupid and too unbalanced to grasp that you do not rush onto the stage ofa live event and assault someone because you didn't like the joke.
As an African-American director joked to us that night at an after party, "This ain't The Source Wards." Nor is it meant to be.
Artists often grow up bullied. They can be seen as different -- and that's not always seen in a good way.
They did not deserve to have the awards marred and, once they were marred by Smith's actions, they did not deserve to have to remain in the theater with Smith.
Again, it's Whoopi's fault.
ZBut she never told her viewers that, did she? She never took accountability for her own actions. And she nver apologized to Chris Rock.
That's something the Academy also failed to do on the night of the awards. They did Tweet about the incident. They did not apologize to Chris publicly.
And they owed him an apology. Which is why, since Whoopi was breaking all ethical rules by discussing the incident already, she should have, on behalf of the Academy, offered Chris a public apology.
This is the worst Board of Governors. That's the statement we heard all last week. When they should have acted, they failed to do so but then, afterwards, some like Whoopi could and did speak at length publicly without ever being aware of just how much to blame they were.
Whoopi early on last week (the day after the ceremony) announced that no one was going to take the Oscar away from him (later in the night, Smith won for Best Actor).
We don't know that this should be announced before an investigation is completed.
We happen to agree you don't take back the Oscar. It's an insult to the person it is awarded to after the fact. "Denzel, we didn't judge you the best but since the best was so awful in real life, it's your award now!" That's an insult to anyone who might recive Smith's award after the fact.
But a new rule needs to be made immediately. You get ejected if you initiate violence at the presentation. Not only do you get ejected but you are disqualified from receiving any award not already presented that night.
Price Waterhouse has officials present throughout the awards. They are responsible for doing the tabulation ahead of the votes. There was a mistake in 2017 that was handled in real time -(the wrong envelope was given to the presenters) and it was corrected in real time. More to the point, no one ever knows ahead of time who is going to win. Price Waterhouse has managed to maintain integrity with regards to the vote count. By the same token, they could have a list of the top two vote getters on site in case another violent act takes place.
Say Rhonda Smeal is up for Best Actress and she's not happy with a comment that Lady Gaga makes. Smeal rushes the stage and attempts to strike Gaga. Though she fails, she's initiated an act of violence and she is immediately ejected. Her conduct is unbecoming and Price Waterhouse checks to make sure that -- even if she had been the original winner -- she is not announced as one. In fact, it should even be stated when the category is presented, "We have four nominees for Best Actress. Earlier this evening, Ms. Smeal removed herself as a contender due to her behavior."
Instead of making excuses -- and pinning the decision of what happened on Chris Rock -- the Academy needs to making plans to ensure this never happens again.
And, please grasp, Chris was the victim of an assault. It is not fair to expect him to deal with that and to also make the call to eject Will Smith. That was the call the Academy should have made. And when the show's producer was too incompetent to make that call, the Board of Governors should have stepped in -- stepped in on site, during the presentation. They also should have immediately taken to the stage and formally apologized to the viewers, to those present and, most of all, to Chris Rock.
Will Packer failed as a producer and should never be allowed back. The failure was too big. He has created a stain on the Academy as a result of his failure to act and evict Will Smith immediately.
It was not fair to Chris who was the victim of assault (and had been assaulted earlier in his life), it was not fair to anyone present that they were forced to sit with a hothead (at best) among them who had demonstrated that he was prone to violence.
It was absurd and it was outrageous.
Absurd also describes the press -- especially the press of the last few years.
Remember Hunter Biden?
Isaiah noted him in "First Family Material?" He's President Joe Biden's son. And he's a problem and then some.
Jon Ward (YAHOO NEWS) reports:
Further proof emerged this week of a financial relationship between President Biden’s son Hunter, the president’s brother James and a Chinese company with reportedly close ties to that country’s ruling Communist Party.
In addition, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that the Justice Department’s probe into Hunter Biden is gaining momentum. He acknowledged last December that federal investigators were looking at his taxes. But the New York Times reported in March that the Justice Department is also looking at whether he may have violated money laundering and foreign lobbying laws.
Meanwhile, allegations that Russian disinformation may have produced or manipulated emails found on a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden at a computer repair shop in 2019 were debunked by the Washington Post.
THE WASHINGTON POST debunked it? Good. But where were they in real time? We know some outlets were For example, we noted October 27, 2020 in "Media: NPR doesn't trust its listeners:"
He goes on to note NPR ombudsperson Kelly McBride's Tweet and we're going to ignore the Tweet -- it just links to the NPR newsletter -- and instead quote from the NPR newsletter she linked to where she writes:
Responding to the New York Post
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But the biggest reason you haven’t heard much on NPR about the Post story is that the assertions don’t amount to much.
“We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,” NPR Managing Editor for News Terence Samuel told me. “And quite frankly, that's where we ended up, this was … a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way.”
The handful of stories that NPR has produced about the NY Post investigation have been limited to how Facebook and Twitter are restricting distribution of the story or how families of those seeking treatment for addiction are impacted by the portrayal of Hunter Biden's struggle. — Kelly McBride
What a load of garbage but that is all Kelly McBride is really. She's supposed to be about ethics. That's why she's the ombudsperson. But reading her nonsense about Nina Totenberg and the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it was clear that Kelly didn't get Nina's job or her own. In the column, she repeats Nina's claim that her long friendship with RBG didn't influence her coverage. Guess what? That's not Nina's call. Nina cannot both conceal the friendship in news reports and then be the one who determines that there was no conflict. Listeners should have known, in every report in which she mentioned Ginsburg, that Nina was close friends with her. They should have had that knowledge so they could evaluate the report.
Kelly McBride, representing NPR declared the story nothing in October 2020. Would she like to rethink that?
So NPR ignored the story and Kelly McBride defended that action. Should she really be teaching on campus? Is she truly qualified for that role or any other? She doesn't appear to grasp what journalism is.
B-b-b-but, Ava and C.i., people can make mistakes!!!!
Absolutely. And they can atone for them as well. Her mistake was huge. It requires a lot of atoning but, more to the point, it needs to start with a public admission that she made a mistake and a public reflection on that. Not a justification. Not a minimization. She was flat out wrong and she was the ombudsperson who is supposed to be making the hard calls. Her call was wrong and we have heard nothing from her about that.
She's far from the only one. But her role in this was especially egregious. The only outlet that might have been worse? THE NEW YORK TIMES.
Most people seem unaware of what that outlet did.
It was called out in an Iraq snapshot in real time and, yes, we remember:
October 16th, THE NEW YORK POST published a story. The response has been outrageous and certainly not the standard for journalism.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, for example, runs an 'investigation' that's nothing but unsourced office gossip about one of their rivals -- conflict of interest. Not only do they do that, they do it in a matter of days.
Remember their mini-culpa on Iraq? That ran May 26, 2004. Over a year and two months after the Iraq War -- a war they sold with lies -- started. But to cover for Joe, the paper swings into immediate action?
As with the charges made by Tara Reade, the press is refusing to investigate what was revealed/alleged in/by THE POST. Instead, it's attack anyone who questions Joe Biden.
Grasp that. Instead of investigating Hunter Biden, the paper elected to investigate THE NEW YORK POST -- a rival outlet -- and to smear them with unnamed gossips who may or may not have actually existed.
They owe THE NEW YORK POST an apology. That was outrageous on every level.
Somethings are intentionally absurd. And absurd can be used in the arts and used effectively. We were reminded of that while viewing PEACOCK's new series KILLING IT.
Early on, we see Craig Robinson's character Craig as a child. He took candy from a store. His father walks in with Craig and his other son and apologizes. They get outside the store and Craig says his brother stole a piece of candy as well. The father makes them wait outside and goes back in to apologize again to the clerk only to discover that the clerk is in fact a robber and this time the father gets shot and killed.
Craig carries a lot of guilt from that and the death also may make some viewers recoil. We honestly were taken aback. What kind of a sitcom offers that violence? And to an African-American at that? But if you hang in there, you realize this is a sitcom dealing with the absurd --- and what better term is there for America today? So Craig is being bitten by a snake and shoots it but hurts himself. Or he goes to his apartment only to find the guy he is BNB-ing to on all fours, nude (well a pale pair of flesh underwear, so nearly nude) in front of a camera as a woman pegs him.
Over and over, you're along for the ride and, no matter where the story turns, it's always absurd. And it's always entertaining. PEACOCK has tossed out a lot of offerings and most of them have not been worth watching. This is the third series they've offered that we felt has been worth streaming (the other two are MCGRUBER and ONE OF US IS LYING). That's a really sad average for a streamer that's about to hit the one year anniversary (April 15th). But at least they squeaked in with one more series before their first 12 months ended. Maybe that provides a little hope for their immediate future?
Back in the sixties, when MY MOTHER THE CAR briefly aired, the youth of America had visions of day-glow and a better world seemed so close. Today, that dream is pretty much smashed to bits which is how we get so much absurdity today. At least KILLING IT is meant to be absurd.