The longer a journalist works, the higher the chances he or she has been called out by someone in a public meeting over some piece of information reported in the newspaper or other news outlet.
When it comes to news reporting, everyone's an editor. Because news writing is linear -- one sentence follows another, one fact must be presented before another fact can be -- the writer has to make choices. And for newspaper writers, their work is evaluated every morning by readers and their sources. Some may believe a reporter made the wrong choices and should have emphasized a piece of information more or perhaps even excluded some details. They're not always shy about making their opinion known.
Thankfully, in my career, it hasn't happened much, but I've sat in a city council meeting or other public session and had a public official or citizen wave a copy of a newspaper around questioning why something was reported a certain way or covered at all. I suppose they'd wave an iPad today.
It's all fair. When you're an actor, an artist, a journalist, a politician, a preacher or anyone else who displays their work publicly, criticism comes with the role.
So, I was thinking last week about my response. Let's say a public official chastised me in, for example, a city council meeting. What do you think would happen if I strolled up the aisle, past the camera livestreaming the meeting, and slapped the official across the face? Do you suppose I'd be allowed to walk back to my seat and continue as though nothing had happened?
I suspect I'd be in cuffs and headed to the county jail pretty quickly, although these days I'd probably be back on the streets before the public meeting was finished. Certainly if the incident happened at a Fayetteville City Council meeting. Sometimes prison sentences are completed before those meetings are gaveled to a close.
Of course, I joke. Lioneld Jordan hasn't trashed me and I haven't popped him up side the head, nor would I ever. And perhaps the prison sentence is hyperbole. Maybe.
On Friday, Will Smith, the actor, got a 10-year sentence for slapping the face of comedian Chris Rock over a joke Smith originally laughed at. But Smith quickly equated Rock's attempt at humor with sticks and stones. Thankfully, though, no bones were broken even after Smith determined that words can hurt.
In true Hollywood fashion, though, Smith's punishment doesn't apparently involve jail or even temporarily being cuffed as a result of the assault, as it would in my scenario outlined above. Undoubtedly, his colleagues in the movie business gasped when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deprived Smith of something perhaps more valued in Tinseltown than liberty. What could it be? Attention.
The academy on Friday announced Smith will be banned from the Oscars ceremony for 10 years. Oh, the humanity. Nothing shows penitence quite like being barred from a long, mostly boring ceremony peppered with self-righteous declarations about political causes.
Smith had earlier resigned his membership in the academy, meaning he won't get to vote on best actor, best film or best anything. I'm not a member of the academy, but I still think it's unfortunate Smith's speech as he accepted the best actor Oscar a half-hour after slapping Rock on live television is now unlikely to be nominated in the category of best excuse-making. After all, I just can't buy the idea that his actions are the fault of Venus and Serena Williams' dad.
Hopefully, Smith will emerge from this limelight purgatory with a better sense of boundaries. But there's a more important question in Hollywood: Does he still get the Oscars swag bag?