Will Smith proves that Hannah Arendt and TMZ don't mix

As I have argued before, the fact that celebrities get blasted for making offensive comments so often is more of a product of our time than of those celebrities themselves. How fitting is it that Will Smith, arguably the least offensive rapper in the history of hip-hop, is getting lambasted for making offensive comments?

The exact quote is provided courtesy of CNN:

In a story published Saturday in the Daily Record, Smith was quoted saying: "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'let me do the most evil thing I can do today.' I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.' "

The quote was preceded by the writer's observation: "Remarkably, Will believes everyone is basically good."

Over the weekend, dozens of celebrity gossip Web sites posted articles about the comment, many saying that Smith believed that Hitler was a "good" person.

"It is an awful and disgusting lie," Smith said in a statement Monday provided by his publicist. "It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation."

"Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet," read the statement.

Trained U of C scholars will identify Will Smith's argument here as the same as Hannah Arendt's famous banality of evil argument: that there was nothing inherently evil about Nazis or anything particular about Nazism, but by performing seemingly banal and earnest goals, unprecedented evil can be accomplished. It was a very controversial argument, to be sure, but I don't think gossip columnists were going for the Life of the Mind when they came up with headlines such as "Will Smith -- Hitler, Schmitler; He Wasn't That Bad" or "Smith: Hitler Was a Good Person."

I actually find is personally offensive that the Jewish Defense League would release a statement saying that Will Smith "spits on the memory of every person murdered by the Nazis. His disgusting words stick a knife in the backs of every veteran who fought (and sometimes died) to save the world from the intentions of Adolf Hitler" without even reading the article. That sounds less like "defending" Jews and more like a witch hunt for anti-Semitism. At HuffPo, Earl Ofari Hutchinson noted that being African-American, Smith may be facing consequences of Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitic and Hitler-sympathizing remarks 20 years ago. But seriously, of all the 80's rappers to attack because of Farrakhan, you're picking the Fresh Prince? I guess they're done going after rappers who said "Farrakhan's a prophet and I think you ought to listen to/ What he can say to you, what you ought to do."