But Polanski and Woody Allen get to keep theirs?
It was a very jarring thing and an assault. But anyone acting like there's some sort of moral high ground the Academy should take over this and still choosing to honor or work with those types are silly IMO.
The difference here is that they didn't assault a presenter during a ceremony over an extremely tame joke (not that it matters since there's no excuse for what he did, period), only to then boast about being a "vessel of love" and such minutes later after winning an award.
Polanski and Allen arguably never were as popular/idolized as Smith who certainly was a hero to many kids in many movies across the years.
It's an absolutely disgusting thing to witness, not only seeing someone you deemed "good" to just act violently for no good reason, but then also see no consequence whatsoever come from it, with people giving him a standing ovation and clapping after all that love and family talk when he just assaulted a man some minutes prior.
It's a bad look for the Academy because it happened at its very heart, live on television, it's disrespectful to every single person in the audience, especially all of those that were nominated and/or won, he single-handedly destroyed the night for many people when it was meant to be countless people's big moment.
I've seen some videos already on this and yeah, a lot of people say he should keep the award because he had been picked as the winner prior to it all and because of his acting.
That's all true, but coming over to a presenter during the ceremony, slapping them across the face in a very sucker-punch-y way, completely lose it in a expletive-filled tirade, and then sit there for the rest of the thing and still accept an award like it was no big deal, the whole thing is extremely bad.