The Hollywood faithful turned out with all their finery to reward one another with self-reverential awards called Emmys. As the public now knows this event turned into a verbal auto de fe of President Trump.
That, of course, isn’t surprising. The anti-Trump vulgarity of Steven Colbert has already been on display before. But what always surprises me is the level of ignorance.
Last week the Hollywood Left was raising money to combat Global Warming. How these well meaning dupes intend to do so isn’t clear. Will DiCaprio give up his private plane? Stevie Wonder said if you don’t agree with these suppositions you either don’t care or you are dumb. This hardly seems like the right way to secure adherents.
But the celebrity who got my attention is Beyoncé. This self-appointed queen of pop said Global Warming, about which the Trump administration is presumably indifferent, causes earthquakes. Now this is a scientific breakthrough. Up until this “revelation” I assumed earthquakes were related to seismic waves that make the ground shake. When plates rub against each other they stick, the rocks break and earthquakes occur. However, I have been deceived; earthquakes develop from CO2 cast into the atmosphere. There is simply no telling where these scientific ideas will lead.
Now in order to be a star of the first magnitude, you have to have a cause. It must be bigger than the self. If it evokes tears, all the better. You might start in Africa, a continent in need of all kinds of aid. Angelina Jolie shows up there routinely as does Madonna. If I take off my cynical judgment, it is possible some of the Hollywood glitterati actually perform good deeds.
Nonetheless, it is best to maintain a wary eye where these devotees of good deeds are concerned. I make this claim because good intentions often foster bad results; in part because so many of these stars know so little. It is instructive that Sean Penn, a high school dropout, has arrogated to himself the role of environmental moralizer.
As I see it, the time has come for these folks to get over themselves. Rather than spend time telling me and others how to live our lives, they would be better off making good films. By the way, there are very few good films that are made as reduced Hollywood profits attest. The producers of the Emmys might also take notice of the fact this recent fiasco of Trump bashing led to the worst rating for any of these shows. Don’t these people realize the U.S. has Trump supporters? America isn’t Hollywood, even if George Clooney, among others, doesn’t know that.
Several years ago, Colbert hosted the Washington Correspondents Dinner which is intended as a roast of the president. When I left the dinner that evening, I heard several Democrats say Colbert’s jokes about Bush were incredibly vile and distinctly inappropriate. Yes, there was a time, not so long ago, when the Left could exercise sound judgment. Clearly those days are gone along with the belief there are cultural ideas that unite us.
Herbert London is President of the London Center for Policy Research, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book The Transformational Decade (University Press of America). You can read all of Herb London’s commentaries at www.londoncenter.org
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