When hosting the Golden Globes in 2020, Ricky Gervais delivered a delicious demolition of Hollywood’s political pretensions, telling his A-list audience: ‘if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So, if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God, and fuck off’. Sadly, it seems the message didn’t sink in.
Awards season is upon us once again, meaning saturated coverage of Tinseltown. The self-congratulatory tone of it all is bad enough, but somehow these overpaid luvvies can’t resist using award ceremonies as a chance to lecture us mere mortals.
At last night’s Grammy awards, the singer Billie Eilish, after winning Song of the Year, bleated ‘as grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land’
At last night’s Grammy awards, the singer Billie Eilish, after winning Song of the Year, bleated ‘as grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land’. A teary-eyed Sabrina Carpenter nodded and applauded as if she’d just witnessed Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Joni Mitchell, Kehlani and Justin Bieber wore ‘ICE out’ pin badges in protest at the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Ah yes, the awards season pin badge. At this year’s Golden Globes, the US talk show host Bill Maher was asked on the red carpet why he wasn’t wearing a lapel pin in honour of Renee Good, who had recently been shot dead by ICE agents in Minneapolis. At the time, he responded: ‘It was a terrible thing that happened and it shouldn’t have happened and, if they didn’t act like such thugs, it wouldn’t have had to happen, but I don’t need to wear a pin about it.’
A decent enough response in the moment. But on the most recent episode of his Real Time show on Friday, Maher devoted an entire monologue to the question, railing ‘I hope I didn’t spoil the perfect record of pins and ribbons solving all the world’s problems. I mean you can’t name a problem from guns to Aids, from bullying to breast cancer, that still exists after people wore a ribbon for it. Except all of them you fucking posers.’ Like Gervais, Maher is one of the few celebrities to fully appreciate the absurdity of Hollywood’s performative moralising.
Is it that overpaid luvvies genuinely feel they are swaying hearts and minds to the liberal cause? If so, their delusion has reached new levels. At the last election, Kamala Harris won endorsements from Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, Taylor Swift, Megan Thee Stallion, George Clooney, Leonard DiCaprio, Bruce Springsteen, Ariana Grande, Barbra Streisand, Olivia Rodrigo, Charli XCX, and many, many more. And a fat lot of good it did her – she lost every single swing state.
In fact, an October 2024 survey of registered voters in Ohio found that 24 per cent of respondents said Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris made them less enthusiastic of her, compared to 14 per cent who said it made them more enthusiastic. So Tay-Tay’s primary contribution to the presidential election was to motivate Republican voters in the rust belt. Perhaps she was a sleeper agent for Trump?
Thankfully, there are still some celebrities with the intellectual humility to stay in their lane. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, The Crown actress Claire Foy said ‘what I believe and who I am and where I stand on things is constantly in flux, as much as it is for everyone else, and I have absolutely no authority to discuss or proclaim about anything other than what I do as an actor.’ She concluded, ‘if you’re just making noise for the sake of it, then you should probably shut up – so I tend to shut up’. Hear, hear!
Is it any wonder the viewing figures for awards shows are in long-term decline, when the Hollywood elite use them as a platform for political preening? Conan O’Brien is scheduled to host the Oscars next month. He’s a fine comedian, but unlikely to offend the liberal sensibilities of his audience. So here’s an idea – pay him off, and get Ricky Gervais to host the proceedings again, with Bill Maher reporting from the red carpet while forcibly removing every virtue-signalling lapel badge. Maybe they can even find a gong for Claire Foy. I’d be stunned if that didn’t get more viewers.
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