From the UK’s Daily Mail:
Let’s be honest, the greatest Oscars fiasco in history couldn’t have happened to a bunch of smugger, more deserving people.
All night, the theme of the Academy Awards had been one of truth.
The New York Times, America’s most self-satisfied, snobbish and unrelentingly Trump-bashing media entity led the way with a $2.5 million TV ad celebrating the very word itself.
‘The truth is hard,’ it began. ‘The truth is alternative facts are lies.’
t then listed a series of things it inferred President Trump has lied about, from Russian ties and his travel ban to climate change, before ending with this comically pompous piece of cynically commercial propaganda:
(Note: the Times is making tens of millions of dollars from its astonishingly partisan anti-Trump coverage – preaching, very lucratively, to an ever-expanding choir of subscribers desperate to gorge on its daily diet of deplorable Donald disasters.)
‘The truth is hard.
The truth is hard to find.
The truth is hard to know.
The truth is now more important than ever.’
It was a theme that thrilled the audience, packed mainly with equally elitist, snobbish, Hillary-loving celebrity actors.
And as the legendary Warren Beatty strode on stage with Faye Dunaway to present the final award for Best Picture, it was a theme he gleefully seized on to round off the night:
‘Our goal in politics is the same as our goal in art, and that’s to get to the truth,’ he solemnly declared.
The crowd cheered.
Of course they cheered.
Truth is what Hollywood’s all about, right?
Hmmm.
Forgive me if I laugh again?
Hollywood tells a good story, definitely.
But facts have never been its strong point. Time and again, movies abuse and bastardise historical events to suit its slathering need to drive box office cash.
I don’t object to that practice, because frankly, I just want to be entertained when I go to the movies.
But I do object when Hollywood pretends to stand for ‘The Truth’.
Just as I object when the New York Times pretends to be an impartial newspaper.
It’s not.
The Times is the media version of the Academy and its membership: an elite, preening organisation stuffed full of liberals that absolutely loathe all things Republican, and especially loathe Donald Trump.
This is why it was so delicious that the most spectacular, toe-curling, humiliating, hide-behind-the-couch moment to ever befell any awards show happened on the night they conspired to damn Trump with ‘The Truth.’
One only rivalled by my old friends at CNN instantly tweeting ‘breaking news’ that LA LA Land had won. Thus falling prey to the very charge of ‘FAKE NEWS’ of which Trump (wrongly, in my opinion) keeps accusing them.
Up until that catastrophe, it had been a rather boring Oscars with very little serious Trump-bashing.
Host Jimmy Kimmel took a few jabs at the President, but then he’s a late-night comedy host – that’s his day job.
Aside from that, there were a handful of digs about the travel ban (from an Iranian) and The Wall (from a Mexican) but none of the big award winners got political at all, which was a blessed relief.
Perhaps it’s finally sunk in that people are bored of hearing celebrities ranting about Trump, even if they didn’t vote or even like him?
And they’re even more fed up with the bitter, fractious divisions that have drowned America in acrimony since the election.
Indeed, Kimmel himself made a commendable plea for unity: ‘There are millions and millions of people watching right now and if every one of you took a minute to reach out to the person you disagree with, someone you like, and have one positive, considerate conversation, not as liberals or conservatives, but as Americans, if we could all do that we could make America great again. It starts with us.’
Halle-bloody-lujah!
So, against all expectations, the post-awards headlines were in serious danger of actually being about movies and who won the Oscars.
Well, apart from Nicole Kidman’s bizarre inability to clap, Dakota Johnson’s hideous gold Gucci dress, those random tourists bussed in to gawp at Denzel and Ryan, and the nauseating standing ovation for the increasingly self-congratulatory Meryl Streep (I suspect she gives herself enough of them in the mirror these days).
Oh, and Viola Davis’s speech, which included this absurd statement: ‘I became an artist, and thank God I did, because we are the only profession to celebrate what it means to live a life.’
Sorry, WHAT?
This is precisely what I mean when I bang on about Hollywood stars being completely out of touch with the real world.
Acting is obviously not the only profession to celebrate what it means to live a life.
What about nursing, midwifery, soldiering, heart surgery, teaching, or humanitarian work?
As with Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes sneer that football and MMA are not ‘real art’, Davis’s words came across as an arrogant smack in the teeth to the millions of hard-working people who pay to see movies and keep these actors in their mansions and private jets.
But then came Warren, bearing his trusty sword of truth, to decapitate Hollywood’s hubris.
From the moment he paused, staring quizzically at the card, I knew something weird was up.
Beatty’s been in the Hollywood game way too long to play the cliché-d ‘let’s sweat them out a bit’ game.
The rest is now Tinsel Town infamy.