When Will Smith slapped Chris Rock to defend his wife against one of Rock's jokes, he ignited a storm of controversy that hasn't let up yet.
What I thought not just after watching clips of that episode but often throughout the three-and-a-half-hour show is how the Oscars —and the world, too — have changed in the last couple of decades, how things have grown darker, starker and meaner.
At times like these I remind myself of what art can do when it's at its best: how it salves wounds, promotes understanding, draws us together. What Ralph Ellison wrote of the novel can sometimes be applied to other arts: "[It] could be fashioned as a raft of hope, perception and entertainment that might help keep us afloat as we tried to negotiate the snags and whirlpools that mark our nation's vacillating course toward and away from the democratic idea."
A raft of hope! ... I'll cling to that.