The Academy Awards are a great annual tradition in which the bubble of Hollywood celebrities, their fashion designers and agents floats to the surface. And these days that bubble is more insular than ever so that means a movie that hardly anyone has seen or would want to see winning Best Picture and condescending lectures by people who have people to deal with people to the American people.
This year that meant Sarah Silverman's ex-boyfriend doing one of those tiresome political rants disguised as comedy bits combined with facile calls for national unity. Because Americans should be uniting around a struggling comedian trying to keep his struggling late night show afloat with fake viral videos instead of the elected President of the United States.
The message of this election was quite clear. It was anti-elitism. It was a rejection of powerful establishments that insist on trying to run the country. Somehow Hollywood didn't get the message.
The industry has become a more pompous joke than ever. It's a joke in which a Big Bang Theory second banana tows his girlfriend around to demand that Muslim migrants be let into the country. It's the joke in which Meryl Streep whines about how mean everyone is to celebrities and Aaron Sorkin accuses the rest of the country of being out of touch with his city.
The whole point here is to mock and sneer at President Trump and his voters. But the joke is really on the celebrity industry.