Trash Talk: Another Oscar In The Can

Last night, I watched the Academy Awards with a sick sense of anticipation. I was thinking this particular outing would be ugly because it seems when politics rears its ugly head, someone or something gets eaten – and I thought what would televised would be historical. Well, after watching for an hour or so, I began to realize that my anticipation for something historical turned into a realization of something hypocritical.

I also learned that whoever is behind the push for political correctness and so-called diversity, knows that political grandstanding can be used as a tool of intellectual and psychological warfare and this is by design.

After the show I did on Friday night and how the image that I used to promote the show offended supporters of Donald Trump and how many people were unable to see the political cartoonishness of the whole affair, I needed the Academy Awards to finally hit home the fact that politics have become nothing more than a zero sum game which is rapidly becoming an unwanted guest anywhere they are played.

Putting a political spin on everything has now become the equivalent of an intellectual nuclear warhead that when used in a conversation, obliterates everything. Those who are involved in social engineering know this and this is why it is being used now more than any other time in history.

The political atomic warhead, when dropped in a conversation turns true intellectual talk into baseless trash talk. When the political time bomb goes off, the fear of being ostracized is a reality because it can and will alter relationships you have with people and it can alter several aspects of your well-being.

The political bomb sends out wave upon wave of influence as it can alter the places in which you choose to do your shopping, what you watch on TV, the movie you go to, the music you like, the talk show hosts you listen to and the people you associate with.

You are either for those who drop the political bomb, or you are against them – if you are against them, then they are well within their right to ruin you.

Those who neither support nor oppose the detonation of the bomb are considered lepers.

So it is best that you not say anything or pretend it doesn’t affect you.

Case in point: At the Academy Awards last night, Chris Rock began the night discussing the controversy over whether or not there was enough diversity in Hollywood. I couldn’t even fathom how much pressure was on him to appear on stage as several black actors and performers discussed boycotting the affair.

What was unsettling is having a black comedian, making jokes about how whites rule Hollywood – and having the mostly white audience laugh and applaud. It was surreal.

What people didn’t realize is that while Chris Rock and other black presenters were all gleefully making jabs at Hollywood – they were all taking part in a psychological experiment.

It was an experiment that clearly illustrated the political bomb – that is the political accusation of no diversity had the advantage over everyone there. It wasn’t up to Chris Rock, or Morgan Freeman, Whoopi Goldberg or Kevin Hart to tell us there is color blindness in Hollywood and that bomb was already thrown — it was up to the audience to decide if it is okay to disagree and if it isn’t or is okay, the response is to laugh uncomfortably instead of being destroyed by the Hollywood thought police.

Chris Rock did not mince words when he said ‘Is Hollywood racist? You’re damn right. He then excoriated the film industry for its racial bias.

The whole exercise was cringe worthy. As the jokes went on, the cause for racial diversity started to sound like a persecution complex.

Then, things got weird.

The movie, 50 Shades of Grey, became an academy award nominee. The song, “Earned It “from the film, was nominated for best song.

I wondered why a movie that tied with three other films Pixels, Jupiter Ascending, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 for the most nominations for worst film of the year was even in the running for best song?

The song was performed by, The Weeknd, complete with dancing girls and trapeze artists dressed in black garters and choke collars. The movie, 50 Shades of Grey, was considered a soft porn film.

Critics dubbed the film “mommy porn” to take the heat off the fact that the blockbuster fan fiction and the new film do not open up discussions about pedophile sex or even deviant predator sex.

The story is fairly simple. Anastasia Steele, a middle-class senior at Washington State University Vancouver, meets Christian Grey, an incredibly handsome, debonair 27-year-old multi-millionaire CEO. They fall in love, hard and fast. Theirs is a romance full of drama and passion, and they end up living the conventional American fantasy: love, marriage, and a kid.

What’s not so conventional is their sex. Early on in the first book, Ana discovers that Christian has a “dark secret”: He’s obsessed with BDSM — a condensed abbreviation for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism.

The frightening thing is that the powerful Christian Grey fits all of the criteria for a sexual predator and coerces consent for his sexual appetites which sends a very troubling signal.

The truth is one on five women be raped within their lifetime, according to the CDC; where nearly 40 percent of those rapes will happen to women aged 18 to 24.

Images of the female protagonist being beaten by Christian become the new normal for what’s considered erotic and it is a sad display of what can be seen as satanic ritual abuse being embraced by the average woman who sees it as a harmless fantasy.

.
Then, 90 minutes into the show, Vice President Joe Biden appeared on the stage.

The crowd went absolutely crazy – giving him a standing ovation. Why was Joe there? We hadn’t heard from him in a while, it had to have been an important message to show up at the Academy Awards.

Was he there to continue with the cringe worthy dissing of the all white Academy Awards? Was he there to say that the Jews run Hollywood? Was he there to say that he was going to star in the new reboot movie about a sleeping democratic socialist called, Weekend at Bernies?

Nope.

After the performance of “Earned it” showing dancers in various sexual positions in sadomasochist attire, he was at the awards show to give us a sermon about rape.

He urged us to all take a pledge to intervene in the “epidemic” of campus rape and sex abuse of drunken college girls and boys by powerful men.

Then I started to laugh, uncomfortably.

Biden was not laughing so the audience all took the pledge.

I thought – this is the oddest and most hypocritical thing ever seen at an Academy Awards night. First, a song for a movie about predatory rape is nominated for an award and then a Vice President asks us to make a pledge against it.

He then introduces Lady Gaga to perform another nominated “Til It Happens to You,” a song from The Hunting Ground — a documentary focusing on sexual assault on college campuses.

Gaga, donning all white, then sat at an all-white piano and sang her moving song surrounded by a group of male and female survivors, each of whom had words or phrases written on their arms, including “It Happened to Me” and “Survivor.”

At the finale of her song, Gaga stood with the survivors and held hands with them onstage as the audience stood in cheering support.

Her performance was riveting, but it certainly seemed hollow when you consider that Lady Gaga gave a huge boost to alleged sexual predator R. Kelly’s career by performing with him in her video, ‘Do What U Want,’ which was denounced by critics as being an “ad for rape.” The music video was directed by Terry Richardson, who is plagued by allegations of sexual harassment by models he’s worked with.

For years, industry insiders have claimed that Terry Richardson used his position of power in the industry to lure, exploit and abuse young impressionable models and celebrities alike – turning regular photo shoots into unintended adult centerfolds.

Terry Richardson directed the music video for “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus. She even had a T-shirt made with Richardson’s face on it with the words, “I was touched by Terry” on it.

Terry Richardson’s work perfectly represents the mindset of the entertainment industry: Exploitation, abuse, degradation, fetishization of childhood, and other controversial imagery — he is not an “anomaly” in the industry – he is the standard.

The irony of the entire night was the winner of best picture went to “Spotlight” a riveting film that covered how the Boston Globe covered the Catholic Church sex scandal.

Before the Oscar was handed to director Tom McCarthy he and actor Mark Ruffalo and co-writer Josh Singer were among protesters outside L.A.’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. “Standing with the survivors of priest sexual abuse,” Ruffalo tweeted on Sunday in solidarity with the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests demanding the public release of the names of pedophile members of the clergy.

Producer Michael Sugar said in his acceptance speech about the film: “This film gave a voice to survivors, and this Oscar amplifies that voice which we hope will become a choir that will resonate all the way to the Vatican, Pope Francis, it is time to protect the children and restore the faith.”

It was all a divine train wreck, that while we were being told of a social ill, and the abuse of men women and children at the hands of sexual predators, we had to bring the focus back to the Academy’s lack of black nominees.

Leonardo DeCaprio won best Oscar for his work in The Revenant – his first Oscar and a moment to give a political shout out for Climate Change. The actor was allowed to ramble on for a while, closing with these words: “Climate change is real — it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating … I thank you all for this amazing award tonight. Let us not take this planet for granted.”

This, coming from a man who uses private jets, and yachts to burn up fossil fuels and to help him live his lavish lifestyle.

Chris Rock ended the night by saying “black lives matter” – after we were just schooled that when it comes to abuse and rape — all lives matter.

Once again the political bomb completely obliterates whatever serious thought we may have had about physical and sexual abuse.

I think now we know why it was more important to force the issue of “White Hollywood” because it is obvious there needed to be a distraction from the sexual abuses and the casting couch affairs that plague the industry.

Text – Check out Ground Zero Radio with Clyde Lewis Live Nightly @ http://www.groundzeromedia.org