Oscars 2020: A convening of Democrats
Oscars 2020: A convening of Democrats

In case you fell asleep for the final award, I’m here to tell you, with help from the New York Post, that “Parasite” won Best Picture. 

It’s a non-English-speaking flick, so I never saw it, and neither did you.

Neither did anybody – except members of the Academy, the few who understand Korean anyway.

The bet here is that it will not score boffo at the box office, and as Noel Coward used to say, Box Office is what it’s all about.

Somebody forgot to tell Brad Pitt, who got the first award, of the evening, for Best Supporting Actor, and immediately turned off half the country with his remark about John Bolton, and how wrong it was that Bolton never got a chance to testify in the Senate – presumably against President Trump, and therefore against the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump.

They buy tickets, too, don’t they…and from what we read in social media, they won’t streaming or buying too many tickets for Brad Pitt’s next movie.

So that’s how the show began, with a bitter taste, and from there it was mostly strange people getting up to express their gratitude for getting an Oscar.

We don’t know these people. But we can be sure that they are all Democrats – and it was never my intention to get political.

So don’t blame me. Blame Brad Pitt, and the audience which applauded him.

No more is it enough to say thanks and go home. The winners now have to make speeches about saving the planet. 
Forget Brad Pitt. It’s about anybody who gets up on stage at these award events and feels at home, that is, comfortable enough to smash mouth Fly-Over-Walmart Shopping America with the cozy assurance that he or she will be embraced by the Woke In-Crowd. It’s just us in the universe, is what they’re saying. The rest don’t count.

Republicans, for example, about half the country, figure in no census taken by the moviemakers. Republicans are treated like Extras. No-name Faces in the Crowd.

If they want to buy tickets, nobody is stopping them. They are tolerated, but barely. In reality, only Democrats are appreciated and welcomed.

Republicans – you’ve got your Truck and Sled Pulling Competitions, don’tcha?

Meanwhile, back to Sunday night, we wait for a real movie star to show up. Cary Grant, maybe? Katharine Hepburn?

How about Kirk Douglas, whom we lost only days ago? As for me, I expected the program to begin with a memorial tribute for the last movie star from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

They don’t make them like that anymore.

“Cast a Giant Shadow” has always been my favorite Kirk Douglas film; about American hero Mickey Marcus who fought and gave his life soldiering for Israel

Kirk Douglas was so good in that, as he was in everything else, yes, Spartacus, but there was something special, something specially true in his playing of Mickey Marcus, perhaps because Kirk Douglas was himself Jewish. So was Lauren Bacall, speaking of the Age when movie stars had class.

Which brings us to near-midnight when Joaquin Phoenix stepped up to accept his Oscar for Best Actor.

No more is it enough to say thanks and go home. The winners now have to make speeches about saving the planet. 

For Brad Pitt it started through saving John Bolton, and for Joaquin Phoenix it ended with saving the cows.

   

Somebody needs to talk about saving Hollywood.

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.

He wrote the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal,” and the authoritative newsroom epic, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” followed by his coming-of-age classics, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” and, the Holocaust-to-Montreal memoir, “Escape from Mount Moriah,” for which contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Website: www.jackengelhard.com