Chris Rock tackled the issue of outrage in his live special
The Story of Rock & Orenthal’s Selective Outrage, the Last of His 30 Years at the X Factories
And for this comedy fan, who still remembers when Rock’s groundbreaking standup specials for HBO redefined his career and the world of comedy in the same moment, Saturday night’s special was sad proof of the distance between a brash young comic trying to make his mark and a seasoned pro who knows how to work the room, even when he might not have as much to say.
The first global live event to stream on the site will be Rock’s special, “Selective Outrage.” A trailer was released for the special, which showed Rock sitting in a dressing room when he received a knock at the door and told Chris they were ready for him.
The two attended an election night party in which a group of white people made comments about how upset they were at the results of the presidential election.
After that quick apparent reference to Will Smith slapping him on stage at last year’s Academy Awards, Rock saved his jokes about the incident until the last ten minutes of the show.
“Wife still mad at ya, ain’t she?” Rock joked. Why drive to Connecticut to be treated badly by a woman? ‘I may as well just stay here and do the show with no voice.’ I am very fond of you honey. I’ve been there, Dave. I do get sick on the road. And if my wife is mad at me I add a few shows.”
“When you’re in a relationship, you’re in a band,” Rock said. “And when you’re in a band, you have roles that you play in the band. Sometimes you sing lead and sometimes you’re on tambourine. And if you’re on tambourine, play it right … ‘cause nobody wants to see a mad tambourine player.”
“That s— was about fame. If O.J. were not famous, he would be in jail right now. “If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn’t even be O.J. He’d be Orenthal, the Bus Driving Murderer.”
He may not have been crying, but Rock’s anger over the incident seemed fresh as if it had just happened last week. “People are [asking me] ‘Did it hurt?'” Rock said, incredulously. It still hurts.
“I have no problem with the wokeness. I don’t have a problem with it. I’m all for social justice. I’m all for marginalized people getting their rights. The thing I have a problem with is the selective outrage,” Rock said. “You know what i’m talking about. One person does something, they get canceled. Somebody else does the exact same thing, nothing. People who play Michael Jackson songs while not playing R. Kelly are what I am talking about. Same crime, one of them just has better songs.”
“We got it worse than Ukraine. Yeah, I said it. You know why? The comedian said that America is clearly divided because of the united Ukraine. Half of the country would accept the Russians if they came here. We’re in a bad spot right now.
Why is Smith a b—? The comedian who has been slapped live on TV has a pretty good chance of not being a victim
“I’m trying to date women my age, which is 10 to 15 years younger than me,” he said. “Don’t hate the player, hate the game. I didn’t get rich, but I did stay in shape. I’m trying to f— Doja Cat.”
A pre-show event kicked off with comedian Ronny Chieng live from Los Angeles, where he told the crowd, “We could have pretaped this whole thing and nobody would have cared, but we are doing this for a noble cause: To finally try to kill off traditional TV and put it out of its misery. In fact, if you listen hard you can hear Baby Boomers canceling the last cable subscription packages.”
Smith is physically more imposing than him, which is why he was referred to as a ” b—” by other people. “They said that he was a predator.” Who’s he hit? Me! A n—- he knows he can beat [up].”
Before Saturday night, it seemed as if Smith had mostly climbed out of the public relations hole he dug for himself by slapping Rock, apologizing publicly several times while admitting the comic hadn’t responded to his attempts to reach out. Smith may have been able to rebuild his reputation because Rock was silent about the incident, and the guy who was slapped wasn’t giving his perspective.
In fact, the comic got so excited he messed up one joke, saying at first Jada wanted him to quit hosting the Oscars in 2016, because Will didn’t get nominated for Emancipation (the movie was actually Concussion, one of the omissions which fed the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag).
Rock was once a huge fan of Smith’s but he had to change his mind after the slap because he wasn’t liking the actor’s movies as much. The comic said that he’s watching to see him get whooped. “Got me rooting for massah!”
Rock insisted that, even though he was slapped live on international television by a much larger man, he wasn’t a victim – unfortunately implying there might be some shame in that designation, while connecting to a rant he had delivered earlier in the night insisting that too many people seek attention by unfairly claiming victimhood.
But some of it also felt like the kind of comedy you might expect from a guy who has been rich and famous for so long, his view of the world is clouded by the bubble of privilege he lives in (for example, Rock’s version of the tired “my pronouns are” joke is that he self-identifies as poor, despite his riches, and his pronoun is “broke.”)
Some jokes were a little odd, such as complaining about people who dance to Michael Jackson songs but refuse to play R. Kelly’s music because he is convicted of sex crimes.
On abortion: “Women should have the right to kill a baby until he’s four years old.” It wasn’t easy being a divorced single guy dating younger women. I’m trying to kill Doja Cat. Beyonce could still marry Jay-Z if she were to work at Burger King. Now if Jay-Z worked at Burger King…”
The Last Rock and His Daughter: The Netflix Special on the January 6, 2006, Grand Budapest, Greece, February 7 – 11: A Memorino with Rock
Rock stalked the stage with energy and the practiced cool of a longtime standup comedy legend – even while admitting he’d gotten his own daughter kicked out of a tony high school to teach her a lesson, claiming that she, his ex-wife and their lawyer were likely finding out he asked the school to expel her by watching the Netflix special.
Because Rock is a comedy pro, a lot of the special was entertaining and some of it was poignant, including his reflections on having a mother who grew up in segregation who is now able to visit her granddaughter studying at culinary school in France. He observed that the January 6 riots were attempts by white men to overthrow the government.
It didn’t help that Netflix hyped the show with both pre and post-concert specials that felt a bit labored. Hosted by Ronny Chieng, David Spade and Dana Carvey, the specials featured tons of appearances from celebrities like Bono (singing Jailhouse Rock before Rock’s show, as one does), Rosie Perez, Matthew McConaughey, Arsenio Hall, Leslie Jones, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and more.
