Oscar slap incident has comedians concerned over safety

BERKELEY, Calif. - The shocking Oscars moment between actor Will Smith and comedian Chris Rock has some comedians jumping to Rock’s defense.

"I thought, ‘Uh oh, this could be bad,’" said comedian Paul Conyers, who is based in the East Bay. "This could embolden people at a show I’m performing at to get really upset at what I say and come up on stage and smack me."

Conyers said the repercussions for an off-color joke should not be physical violence. He thought Smith should have been removed from the event. Instead, he got to say, won an award, got a standing ovation, and made an emotional speech.

Conyers said, "This isn’t about cancel culture. This is about being assaulted for trying to tell a joke on stage."

"I was startled," said Joe Hill, a standup comedian from Berkeley who has been featured on Comedy Central and Netflix. "I was shocked. And I was in disbelief like the rest of the world."

Hill agreed it sent a bad message there was no immediate reaction from the Academy or security. "Somebody should have intervened in that moment, because it wasn't right," he said.

Smith has since apologized, condemning violence and calling his own behavior unacceptable. Part of his statement reads, "a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally,"

Rock joked that he could not wait to see Jada Pinkett-Smith in GI Jane 2.

Pinkett-Smith has been open about her battle with alopecia, a rare autoimmune disease that causes hair loss. The Oscars controversy is shining a light on this medical condition, one that San Francisco radio host and producer Michelle Meow, of "The Michelle Meow Show" knows personally.

Meow was diagnosed with alopecia areata at the end of 2020. In a matter of weeks, she lost all the hair on her body except her eyebrows and eyelashes. "I got in the shower and just noticed globs and globs of hair falling off."

Meow said Rock’s joke was triggering and disappointing. "Hearing the joke is was just tiring to me. I was like, it’s not even funny. It was really uncalled for."

She said alopecia took a toll on her mental health. She said people would stare, ask questions, and make assumptions about her health. "When you see a woman with no hair you either automatically think she’s ill she’s sick, there’s something wrong with her or maybe she has masculine tendencies," said Meow. "People want to know more than you want to say and you just get so tired talking about what you look like."

There’s no known cure for alopecia although in some cases, like Meow’s, hair does start to grow back. Alopecia affects about 2% of Americans.