Each year I write about the predictably smug, "woke" and self-congratulatory award shows.
In January The Golden Globes kicks off this annual ritual of actors giving each other awards, which lasts through about November. I like to watch the Golden Globes as it is a great indicator of how boring the Academy Awards will be. The only change in last year's ceremony, which was hosted by the self-righteous and predictable Seth Meyers, was that fewer actresses thanked Harvey Weinstein.
To many of us, the biggest casualty of the Trump administration is that all of the humor of our late-night comics has been lost to angry, political hate diatribes.
Seth Meyers and Steven Colbert personify the Hate-Trump Tourette's syndrome, which renders them no longer funny, relevant or insightful. In the past, you could get three hours of college credit for listening to the liberal lectures at award shows.
Enter Ricky Gervais of "The Office" fame.
Gervais, this year's Golden Globes host, woke up the "ever-woke," sanctimonious, shallow and hypocritical Hollywood with his opening monologue. Gervais, beer in hand, told the leftist actors, "If you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech, right? 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."
He went on to point out they work for entertainment conglomerates like Amazon, Apple and Disney, companies that produce goods in child labor- and human rights-violating countries like China. He went on to tell the A-list actors, "If ISIS started a streaming service, you'd call your agent" to get a gig.
Getting lectured by pampered millionaires who act out roles written for them by smarter people about fictitious heroes has gotten old. Dripping in diamonds, flying private, they have no moral standing to lecture us. A UCLA study said the motion picture industry, which flies workers to Georgia for the tax credits and builds elaborate sets soon torn down, has one of the biggest carbon footprints of any industry.
The always litigious Congressman Adam Schiff, D-California, represents the Hollywood district where the event was held. He has already filed articles of impeachment with the Hollywood Foreign Press to assure his constituents that Gervais cannot host again next year. The Clintons have already written a condolence letter saying they are "saddened by Mr. Gervais' apparent suicide."
Long gone are manly Republicans like John Wayne and Ronald Reagan. Actors now are considered for movies where they play Marvel heroes whose superpower is that they eat gluten.
The ceremony was predictably long, but at least tempering the political speeches and voter registration drives made it more tolerable. I was afraid the event would go on so long that the child actor from the Nazi movie "Jojo Rabbit" would have survived puberty and been able to drink at the Golden Globe bar before it was over.
Another observation I had is that most of today's American movie actors have British accents, and that doesn't even include Madonna and Tina Turner. Maybe Trump needs to look into foreign actors taking American jobs.
Absent this year was last year's theme, #OscarsBeSoWhite. No directors and few, if any, winners were black. I guess once actors hashtag Tweet something, they presume the problem solved.
Ron HartContact Ron Hart at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.