… aaaand we’re back. As promised, with T-shirts. Read on.
What Will Smith did. Here’s uncensored video of a moment that Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper calls “one of the darkest … in Academy Awards history” …
■ … as Smith struck presenter Chris Rock after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife.
■ Accepting the award for Best Actor a few minutes later, Smith apologized to the Academy—but not to Rock.
■ Los Angeles cops say Rock isn’t pressing charges.
■ Rock and the Smiths have a long history.
■ Former Tribune Public Editor Don Wycliff, commenting in a Facebook thread: “All the boys that I mentor will wonder why it’s okay for Will Smith to hit someone with whom he has a dispute but not for them.”
■ After the incident, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences broadly asserted that it “does not condone violence of any form.”
■ After the ceremony, Smith went dancing with his Oscar.
■ And, oh, yeah: Apple’s CODA is the first streaming movie to take the award for Best Picture.
‘Nine unscripted words.’ CNN’s Stephen Collinson says President Biden’s Saturday remark about Vladimir Putin—“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power”—poses grave questions for the administration.
■ The BBC: “By Sunday, even some U.S. allies were attempting to distance themselves from Mr. Biden’s remarks.”
■ Updating coverage: The mayor of Mariupol, Ukraine, is calling for the city’s “complete evacuation,” conceding that it’s now “in the hands of the occupiers.”
■ With the risk of Russian cyberattacks on the rise, a computer science professor warns that local U.S. governments are sitting ducks.
‘My life is over.’ A coworker attributes those words to a CTA worker charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting a man inside the 95th Street Red Line station.
■ The CTA says “The behavior of this one employee is not at all reflective of the thousands of hardworking, dedicated men and women who … perform their duties each day.”
‘Mike Madigan sticking the knife in the back of his own beloved daughter.’ That’s veteran political reporter Carol Felsenthal’s tweet-take on a Trib investigation detailing how the ex-Illinois House speaker killed legislation advocated by his daughter, then-Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
■ The Better Government Association flags Gov. Pritzker’s perfunctory lifting of a freeze on Michael Madigan’s pet projects “funded through a process largely shrouded in secrecy.”
‘The next generation should be very, very afraid.’ Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch spotlights “the growing illegitimacy of the Supreme Court.”
■ Reviewing the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, HBO’s John Oliver salutes her “exquisite” use of … the pause …
■ … which The Nation’s Elie Mystal says reflected “the same calculation nearly every Black person … has made at some point while living in the New World.”
‘I found that unsustainable.’ Fox News defector Chris Wallace opens up to The New York Times about why he left for CNN.
■ In his words: “I can certainly understand where somebody would say, ‘Gee, you were a slow learner, Chris.’”
Chicago Public Square T-shirts are here.
_____
* Marking, as it does, 60 years to the day since this journalistic debut.