This Side of the Pond

I can’t believe it’s been almost two weeks and we’re still talking about less than a minute’s worth of footage during an award show that most of us forgot to watch. In case you somehow managed to miss out on the drama: Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars for making a joke about his wife’s shaved head, which Rock may or may not have known was due to alopecia.

Tens of millions of people watched the footage in the aftermath – far more than saw it live. The “slapping incident” now has its own Wikipedia page.

But after a few days, the conversation began to change. We were no longer...