People are angry that Simon Ateba asked the Biden White House about Will Smith and Chris Rock. But, entertainment and gossip are cerebral. This is why

Here is our top story: People are angry with me that I asked the Biden White House during a White House press briefing yesterday (Tuesday) about the altercation between actor?Will Smith?and comedian?Chris Rock.

Well, since millions of people have now watched that trending video on Twitter and close to 200, 000 others have watched it on C-span (video below), I think it will be fair to hear directly from me.

First of all, I also asked about Ethiopian refugees who are not being giving the same treatment by the Biden administration as Ukrainian refugees who have also been forcibly displaced by Russia’s aggression on Ukraine. Sadly, that question did not catch anyone’s attention. All the articles that have been written so far, and all the videos are only on Chris Rock and Will Smith incident. There lies our hypocrisy.

Readers love drama, and conflict, and passion and disagreements and all the rest, but if you begin to talk about hunger, and refugees and health, you suddenly realize that people lose attention and move on to the next trending topic.

But why did I ask the White House about Chris Rock and Will Smith?

You see, entertainment and gossip are two of the most important things in life to understand a society. When people give their opinion about celebrities, they cannot do it without disclosing their own belief systems, noted?Elaine Lui?during one of the most watched?Ted Talks on “the psychology of gossip.”

The Biden White House may think that what comedians and entertainers and gossip columnists do is not so distinguished, not so cerebral. They might think that it is a little bit dirty and not rising to the high White House level.

But, perhaps, entertainment and gossip, the lives of celebrities, their breakups, their love stories, their drug abuse, the violence or love they portray, perhaps those things are reflection of the society.

Entertainment and people in the limelight set a code of conduct for the society, it determines what we find acceptable and what we find repulsive, it says much more about the society than a presidential speech.

The celebrity ecosystem allows us to understand social culture, to understand humanity, to understand social behaviors, to understand ourselves.

When a man who has just walked up to an Oscars stage to slap a comedian who is presenting the award gets an Oscar a few minutes after and he receives a standing ovation, what does that say about the society? When they are not escorted out even after assaulting someone before an international audience, what does that say about us?

Are we a society that condemns violence when it is perpetrated by the poor and ordinary people, and condones it when it is done by celebrities? Does having money give privileges that are not enjoyed by poor people? Do we pay attention to what high profile entertainers do now or do we wait until they become presidents and express outrage then?

What do we believe in? What do we condemn? What do we condone? What type of behaviors do we encourage?

That’s what the celebrity ecosystem and the gossip around is all about. It all helps us to set a code of conduct. The White House failed yesterday because it may not have understood what gossip or entertainment is all about.

This may also explain why President Biden’s approval ratings are low. If you fail to understand a society and what people care about, yo0u may give a billion speeches and take questions from the sun and the moon, people will not care and you will lose your seat.

Simon Ateba, Publisher and White House Correspondent for Today News Africa in Washington DC