As I write this, it is hours away from the 92nd Oscar ceremony in Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre. This is where the most famous and “awesome” human beings in existence gather annually to give awards to each other for acting and pretending to be other people.
I don’t know if you know the area. I speak there often. Glitterati who wear $100,000 gowns, every one of them as “woke” as can be, are only a few short miles from one of the largest homeless encampments in America.
The whole ensemble resembles the French aristocracy of Louis XVI, driving in their carriages past the starving of Paris, just before the revolution. Of course, the French nobility didn’t pretend to care about those begging on the sidewalks. Hollywood’s elite, registered Democrats all, do.
At the Golden Globe ceremony (a sort of qualifier for the Oscars), an English comedian called Ricky Gervais who was the host shocked Hollywood’s greatest. He began…
“Do I pander to the 200 privileged egos in the room, or do I try and entertain a global audience of 200 million people sitting at home who aren’t winning awards?”
Gervais decided to entertain the people and went on to tell the Stars…
“If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.
“So, if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God, and get lost.”
I am told he actually used profanities, but I was sent an edited version by a friend who knew I wouldn’t like the R-rated original.
I don’t know who Ricky Gervais is, but I like him. Not all the people in the audience did. After all, these people have egos the size of those sprawling homeless encampments they rode past in their limos.
One thing did puzzle me as I researched this article, a glaring omission in the nominations. There are several categories of course, Best Picture of the year, Best Actor/Actress, Best Costume Design, etc.
Yet the biggest film of the year, in fact the biggest film of all time, only made it to one nomination and that was for Visual Effects. The Film was, “Avengers End Game.”
In the real world that Gervais referred to, the audience indicated their approval of the film giving it $2.797 billion at the box office.
But none of that mattered to the handful of actors and directors who nominated the finalists! “What have ordinary people got to do with us, they might end up homeless any minute in any case!”
One of the actors who appeared in the biggest movie of all time is called Mark Ruffalo and he is not just an actor…he is an, “activist.” This is a recent, essential addition to any Star’s resume.
I fear Ricky Gervais’ analysis of Ruffalo’s understanding of the real world has come too late. Ruffalo recently tweeted to his followers demanding that NBC and its sister cable news network, MSNBC, stop hiring “white conservatives.”
He has also openly defended anti-Semites.
CNN along with other left-wing media like the New York Times, have struggled recently with their staff being caught red-handed reveling in anti-Semitic comments and tweets.
One of their regular commentators, Professor Marc Lamont Hill, was fired for happily employing the anti-Semitic slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” That slogan is a mantra of Hamas and other “radicals” (the preferred P.C. term for “terrorists” by the way). It clearly means the total elimination of the Jewish state.
Ruffalo passionately defended Lamont Hill while organizing a petition to have him reinstated. In doing so, he managed to employ anti-Semitic stereotypes. Ruffalo linked to a statement asserting that Marc Lamont Hill had been fired “under pressure from right-wing leaders and the Jewish establishment” (sic).
Intriguingly, Ruffalo claimed to be a Jew, at the same time he was defending an anti-Semite! I am deeply skeptical. There is certainly no evidence online that I can find. Every site that mentions his ethnicity have him as 75% Italian and 25% French-Canadian.
Of course, Bernie Sanders has recently been talking about his “pride” at being a Jew while happily hugging Omar and Tlaib, so it’s possible. But claiming ethnicity that you know you don’t have just to camouflage anti-Semitism is a well-known device, particularly to those on the anti-Semitic Left.
Even the “Forward” condemned Lamont Hill and the liberals that leaped to his defense, writing, “If David Duke agrees with you on Israel, you probably hate Jews.”
Those who call for the destruction of the State of Israel, do so in the full knowledge that they are calling for a second Holocaust. They lamely pretend to others and perhaps even to themselves that they mean something else. They are simply acting.
There is no way that the Jewish state would be eliminated otherwise. Iran is of course honest about this point. Its proxies are too. Its fellow travelers in the West are not.
We can’t expect the few hundred actors who gather annually to congratulate themselves to realize that they are in no position to “lecture the public about anything.” We can and must remind ourselves of the enormity of their egos and the tininess and fragility of their understanding of the real world.