The Asinine and the Absurd 78th Annual Golden Globes Awards

Hollywood once again proved itself to be the moral authority of our time when a bevy of stars took to the stage Sunday night at the 78th annual Golden Globes Awards to rail against President Joe Biden’s unconstitutional, murderous air strikes in Syria, his caging of illegal immigrant kids, and his failure to fight for a $15 minimum wage, Medicare-for-All and a $2,000 stimulus check during this calamitous coronavirus lockdown.

Just kidding.

With the bad orange man gone from the White House it was back to Hollywood business as usual at the painfully lackluster, socially-distanced Golden Globes where there was a lot of performative virtue signaling regarding diversity but no actual political courage on display.

The Golden Globes have long been a running joke as the Hollywood Foreign Press (HFPA), a collection of 89 “foreign entertainment journalists” who vote on the awards, notoriously care less about artistic quality than lining their pockets, corporate swag and basking in star power.

The L.A. Times recently did a searing investigation of the organization and, shock of shocks, found them to be corrupt…I think Captain Obvious was the reporter who broke the story. 

Hollywood’s big takeaway from the L.A. Times story though was that the HFPA is racist because it has no black members.

This was highlighted throughout last night’s show as flaccid comedy duo Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, as well as numerous presenters, made snide comments about the racial “scandal”. This led to one of the more riotously funny moments when an Indian woman and Turkish man who are members of the HFPA had to grovel on live tv about how bad they were for not having black people in their group. Diversity!

Ironically, after all the bemoaning of HFPA racism the three of the first four awards given out went to black actors, Daniel Kaluuya for Judas and the Black Messiah and John Boyega for Small Axe, and to the first black led Pixar film Soul.

Later in the night the Best Actor and Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama awards also went to black artists, the late Chadwick Boseman for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Andra Day for The United States vs. Billie Holiday.

Stupid Golden Globes can’t even stay on brand when it comes to their own racism.

One of the few bright spots in previous Golden Globes has been comedian Ricky Gervais serving as ornery host. Gervais’ scathing opening monologues at the Globes are some of the best comedy of recent years. Never one to pander or genuflect to his star-studded and empty-headed live audience, Gervais instead consistently eviscerated the cavalcade of self-satisfied and self-righteous stars luxuriously partying before him.

Unfortunately, this year Gervais wasn’t hosting so instead of his uncomfortably honest and gloriously cutting comedy we were stuck with the insipid nice girl comedy of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

Another redeeming quality of the past Golden Globes awards has been watching celebrities get drunk at the dinner party style affair. Sadly, this year’s show was “socially distanced” so random shots of sloppy drunk celebs were replaced with awkward moments on zoom. .

Sans Gervais and drunk celebs the Golden Globes were reduced to being nothing but a handing out of awards no one, even the people winning them actually care about.

Besides the endless babbling about diversity and inclusion, the political talk was pretty minimal. Sure, Borat made some stale Trump and Giuliani jokes, and Mark Ruffalo bemoaned the “hideous dark storm” of Trump “we’ve been living through” and Aaron Sorkin mentioned democracy being under siege, but that was about it.

What is so striking is there were ample opportunities for Hollywood heavyweights to speak up about current issues, but they refused.

Sean Penn, one of my favorite actors and activists, was there, and besides looking like Moe from the Three Stooges, he didn’t do much of anything except display a shocking lack of testicular fortitude. He could’ve spoken up about Biden’s illegal attack on Syria, like he had done about the Iraq War…but he didn’t.

Jodie Foster won best Supporting Actress for her work in the film The Mauritanian, a movie about the injustice of a prisoner held in Guantanamo Bay for fourteen years without charge. But Foster never mentioned Guantanamo Bay, injustice or the immorality of the War on Terror in her acceptance speech.

Famed anti-war activist Jane Fonda, who once went to North Vietnam while the U.S. was at war with them, was awarded a lifetime achievement award but never mentioned Biden’s illegal airstrikes in Syria, or his support of murderous tyrant Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, or the continuation of the “kids in cages” immigration policy. She instead just regurgitated the usual woke pablum of diversity and inclusion.

Chloe Zhao won best director and best drama for her film Nomadland, which examines those crushed under the boot of American capitalism. Yet she never once mentioned Biden’s failure to push for the $15 minimum wage, Medicare-for-All or a coronavirus stimulus check which he promised, three things which would immeasurably help the suffering people featured in her film.

With Trump gone and the corpse of Joe Biden being the one obliterating Syrians and caging kids at the border, Hollywood elites are now all too happy to lose their stridently socially conscious rhetoric in favor of status quo cheerleading and social justice ass-kissing.

In 2017 in the wake of Donald Trump’s election Meryl Streep “bravely” spoke out in defense of immigrants at the Globes, which was curious since she had been completely silent during the previous 8 years when Obama set deportation records and put “kids in cages”.

It seems Hollywood is following in Queen Meryl’s faux-noble footsteps by deciding to stay quiet now when speaking up would take courage.

Everyone knows Hollywood is not exactly filled with the bravest souls that are driven purely by integrity and their commitment to principle. But the amount of self-righteousness mixed with craven cowardice on display at the Golden Globes last night was remarkable even by Hollywood’s depraved standards.

In conclusion, if the Golden Globes are any indication, awards season is going to be filled with the most venal, vacuous and vapid posing and preening imaginable, but it won’t feature any principled protests against Biden administration policies, no matter how abhorrent they may be.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021