If you punch a famous comedian in the face on live television, you have not only committed assault, but you have also given him the greatest material of his career. Especially if you, too, are famous. This is the hard lesson Will Smith learned after Chris Rock took aim at him in his latest Netflix special, Selective Outrage. 

Rock waited until close to the end of his sketch to get his revenge on Smith. He said the real reason Smith was angry is because of his wife’s infidelity — her affair with her son’s friend. And then insinuated that Will had effectively been humiliated and emasculated by the couple’s public presentation of Jada’s affair as a period of positive marital growth.

“Now, I normally would not talk about this s***. But for some reason, these n***** put their s*** on the internet,” Rock said. “Everybody in the world called him a b****. Everybody called him a b****. And who does he hit? Me! A n**** he knows he can beat. That is some b**** a** s***.”

Of course, as Armond White writes, Chris Rock isn’t exactly an exemplar of masculinity himself. But then we already knew not to look for virtue in Hollywood.