I find it more weird that anyone would stand up for Chris Rock. The guy was just being an a-hole.
Good on Will Smith. That type of humor is so stupid and lame and I'm 100% fine with slapping someone who thinks that stuff is funny and okay. Also let's not kid ourselves, Chris Rock would have just loved it if Smith had just stuck to words. Now he clearly got a bit shook up, and that's good. Just because you get paid to make others laugh is not an excuse to be a scumbag.
I mean, it was such a lame joke it's not even a joke if she's not there, the only real punchline is "ooh, look I'm being rude to someone in the audience". It's a great example of "taboo breaking" humor done badly. "Oh look, I'm insulting someone for their disabilities". Soooo brave
Gervais, who I also don't find particularly funny, at least roasts people for things they
do, and things
people totally deserve to get roasted for. You know, roasting DiCaprio for still only dating young girls even though he's getting close to 50, or talking about the racism of Hollywood press, or about Apple's relationship with China, or just the general hypocrisy of the supposed liberals in the audience. In general his target is hypocrisy and immorality, or bad movies. Stuff people did, not something they are.
Making fun of someone's disability is just school bully stuff, it's just Chris Rock being an unimaginative scumbag, and I'm totally for slapping stupid scumbags who make lame insult jokes thinking they're funny. Oscars or not.
I don't get why Americans are so fascinated with this type of low-brow insult humor and roasting, as if there was some taboo there to be broken still. It's never anything clever. They should watch more British comedy shows to see how this stuff is done well.