I don’t watch the Academy Awards, or any awards shows for that matter. Apparently, most of you probably didn’t either – ratings are down 18% from last year. However, I have to admit that the post-ceremony coverage has been pretty entertaining, as we’ve gotten to watch many of the left’s various professional victimhood classes turn on each other over what took place during the ceremony. National Review’s Ian Tuttle wrote up a good summary:
The American political Right has come to expect that Hollywood’s annual excess of self-congratulation will, as a matter of course, feature intermittent exhibitions of tired left-wing politics. Glamorous multimillionaires who win top honors in the most glamorous profession in America then transform stage into soapbox to complain about [insert faddish societal injustice]. So it was little surprise when Patricia Arquette took the occasion of her Best Supporting Actress victory Sunday evening to tout the need for wage equality: “To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s rights. It’s time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America.” Backstage, she expanded: “It’s time for women in America and all the men, all the gay men, the people of color, to fight for us now.”
But the remarks earned a fierce response from various quarters on the left, which knocked Arquette for what was evidently a basic ideological failure: “Patricia’s comments show the danger in not being hip to this whole intersectionality thing,” tweeted Tracy Clayton, a staff writer at Buzzfeed. “Women of color get erased.” Who is hip to “intersectionality”? A not insignificant number of Twitter users, apparently, who made sure to pile on.
But what, exactly, was her sin?
Let Andrea Grimes explain. In “Patricia Arquette’s Spectacular Intersectionality Fail,” posted on Monday to RH Reality Check, an extreme “reproductive rights” website, Grimes criticized Arquette’s backstage comments for “eras[ing] gay women and women of color and all intersecting iterations of those identities.” Arquette’s transgression was her insensitivity to the hierarchy of disadvantage that is revealed when one considers various “intersections” of identity: non-white woman, non-straight woman, non-white non-straight woman. Grimes encouraged “white women” not to “go all ‘Je Suis Patricia Arquette,’” since the actress had revealed her insufficiently developed sense of the evils of privilege.
What she in fact revealed was that she is insufficiently left-wing for a chunk of the Left.
Arquette wasn’t the only one to draw ire:
Something similar happened to — who knew this was possible? — Sean Penn. Presenting the evening’s Best Picture award to Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu, from Mexico, Penn joked, “Who gave this son of a bitch a green card?”
“Great job Sean Penn,” tweeted Saved By the Bell star Mario Lopez. “Ruining a fantastic moment with a green card ‘joke.’” “#OscarsSoWhite A Director can’t accept an Oscar without being the butt of a racist joke,” tweeted Mic staff writer Derrick Clifton, using the “#OscarsSoWhite” hashtag that gained purchase after the Selma director nominations “snub.” Clifton again: “Even when people of color get awarded by mainstream industry orgs, racist ignorance often overshadows their achievements.”
It did not matter that Iñárritu immediately said that he found the joke “hilarious.” Penn — the Sean Penn who pals around with Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro, and who was crowned Best Actor for his hagiographic portrayal of gay-rights activist Harvey Milk — “othered” Iñárritu, and proved that he, too, is insufficiently left-wing for a part of the Left.
Even Neil Patrick Harris wasn’t immune. Harris is the rare breed enjoying wide ranging support in Hollywood, beloved by the left for being an openly gay actor, and loved by the rest of us for being a talented comedian. But not even Hollywood’s biggest openly gay star was immune to leftist vitriol, from his opening joke “Tonight we honor Hollywood’s best and whitest. Sorry, I mean brightest”, to his quip “Edward Snowden couldn’t be here for some treason”, Harris took lefty fire for those remarks.
Image appears via The People’s Cube
Forget how the media likes to trump up any disagreement between Republicans as some major rift within the party, the left looks like it’s descending into a civil war of its own. A few years ago when Tim Tebowmania was big I wrote about how the left has to have someone to hate. While their policies have become increasingly extremist, they’ve had the benefit of a charismatic figure in President Obama to keep them all together. His expertise at convincing all of his various interest groups that he’s “one of them” has allowed them to focus all of their natural vitriol toward anyone opposed to the president. But what happens when this central figure goes away? The radical left’s “Divide and Hate” strategy worked very well in the presidential elections, but outside of those elections the American people have roundly rejected their ideology. And now as the president fades into selfies and interviews with green lipstick wearing non-journalists, the left is losing its binding element. And now they’re starting to notice that their one time allies all have some trait that is the subject of their personal hatred. And they are turning on each other. Yes, the mainstream press is trying to keep their anger properly focused with silly non-stories on Scott Walker and Rudy Guliani, but until they find a new cause to unify their hatred, this is going to get ugly. And it may leave some memories that won’t soon fade when these factions are called on to unite again someday.
Time to kick back with some popcorn – hooray for Hollywood!
Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
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