Whataboutism

Cast your mind back for a moment. It is the week after the Oscars, and everybody is talking about one thing: Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, an event practically engineered to generate opinions. For some, however, this cultural focus on a celebrity spat was a problem. “Your periodic reminder that this was the headline a week ago today but you may not have read it because an actor slapped another actor at an awards show,” ran a tweet above a picture of a headline reading “UN warns Earth ‘firmly on track toward an unlivable world.’” “The craziest thing about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock,” went another, “is that for the past 7 years the US and UK have backed a war against Yemen that killed 400,000 civilians and starved 17 million more.”