“The experience of seeing it live was just baffling. Like: What? What?? What the fuck just happened? 

”A few things in retrospect now that we've got a little distance from it. First off: It was wrong. There's no conversation about, 'Well, I don't know, Will had...' No. 'But Chris...' No. 'I mean, seriously, if it was his wife...“ No! It was fucking wrong. You don't go up and smack someone in the fucking face anywhere. It was wrong. I mean, there's no conversation about that.

”And that other idea that, 'Is this what happens when we tell jokes? Are we afraid to tell jokes?' No! It had nothing to do with the joke. ... 

“In that moment, all that happened in terms of the discussion, is: The guy who's spent the last 30 years of his career managing his personality to be one of the nicest guys in show business, and have everyone like him, lost his fucking mind. That's what happened. I don't know what's going on with him, how far back it goes, I don't know if it's relative to a past thing with Chris, or if it's relative to his marriage, to the pressure he's been under, what he exposed about himself in his memoir—I don't know what caused it. But in that moment that guy left reality, no longer had a context, and decided, impulsively, and without much reflection, to go onstage and hit a peer on national television. That's what happened. A guy fucking snapped. It could happen to anyone, I guess. Not great timing. But it's got nothing to do with 'Can you tell jokes anymore?' It's got nothing to do with whether it was virtuous or not, it's got nothing to do with any of that. 

”A guy snapped. And it was a bad time for it to happen. And it was wrong. That's it. ...

“When he went up and hit Chris, he was not at the Oscars. I don't know where he was. All he knew was he was following a red-hot rage impulse, and I think by the time he got up there to accept that Oscar, he was still sort of out-of-body, and he was still reckoning with I-don't-know-what. ... It was the most profound display of self-sabotage I've ever seen.” 

-- Marc Maron, on his WTF podcast, which dropped yesterday. Give it a listen. It starts at 3 1/2 minutes in.