So let me make sure I have this straight. They make movies belittling our troops while they’re in harm’s way; they despise the manners and morals of most Americans; their patriotism is dependent on the results of the last election. And now they get together to give each other prizes and we’re supposed to care because… why? Because the girls are beautiful in their pretty dresses? Because they’re glamorous and we’re drab? To hell with them. Really. They’ve violated our trust, abused their privileged position in the world and treated the common run of us with incredible disrespect. Let them celebrate themselves in the dark of our indifference.

The Academy Awards are increasingly ignored not because the award show itself is long and boring. It was always that. It’s because the movies have made themselves increasingly irrelevant. In one film after another, we are told that the world in front of our eyes isn’t really there, that instead the world is really as the left imagines it. In the world as it is, a religion of violent intolerance has risen up against the freest, most moral civilization ever established on earth. In the movies, we’re the bad guys and Islamists are the persecuted ones. In the world as it is, an American president sacrificed his popularity to free 30 million people from a crushing tyranny of government sponsored rape, torture and murder. In the movies, that president is a degraded fool and a lowlife. In the world we see, nearly a million poor children die of malaria every year because environmentalists engineered a ban on DDT. In the movie world, environmentalists are always our saviors, the corporations that make insecticides always evil. In the world we know, an irresponsible sex life leads to unwanted children, abortions, depression and disease. In the movies, it’s all violins, romance and hilarious fun.

We turn to the arts for insight. Instead, they give us lies.

Talent is blind, I know that. It comes to roost in good people and bad. It rises up in quiet men who love their wives and serve their country; it comes to fools who make a hell on earth for everyone who gets close to them. I don’t begrudge a celebration of talent in people I dislike or for work I personally disagree with. But the movies no longer serve the purpose they were made for. They no longer tell stories that help us understand the world. What was once an art form that could both entertain and explore the human condition is now merely a conversation held by misguided elitists among themselves. It may sound like they’re talking about ideas and emotions, but the Oscars are the revealing subtitles telling us what they’re really saying: “Darling, you’re beautiful.” “No, Darling, you’re beautiful.” “Oh, but you’re even more beautiful, really.”

Darling, I don’t give a damn.

AND FOR BEST SUPERCILIOUS GASBAG…

Let’s say you believe that gay marriage should be legalized and you want to convince those among your fellow Americans who have reservations. It seems to me the wisest, most effective course would be to assume the opposition to be people of good will with real concerns and to argue your position before them forcefully but reasonably. Now let’s say you’re a narcissistic windbag who wants to parade yourself in front of people who agree with you as an icon of crusading righteousness when you’re really just a violent lowlife who idolizes dictators and tyrants while attacking your own country. Ah, then you would be Sean Penn. Winning an admittedly deserved Oscar for an excellent performance in Milk, Penn used his time at the podium to declare everyone who doesn’t support his cause hateful and shameful, a disgrace to their grandchildren. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Leftists are always talking about diversity but if you disagree with them—you’re a monster. What a schmuck!