The Academy Awards aired last night. Odds are you didn’t watch it. Hollywood has problems, and while they are good about lecturing everyone else, they can’t fix themselves.

Here are four lessons that Hollywood should learn, but they can’t seem to because they’re too busy trying to remove the splinter from the eye of the American public instead of taking the log out of their own.

1) The show is too long.
Let’s not even talk about the hours of “red carpet coverage” that watches the rich and famous walk in wearing their fancy dress-up clothes before the actual show begins. The Academy Awards – again – ran over three hours long. That’s longer than most of the movies that are being recognized. The Academy tried to shorten up the show by moving some of the more technical awards to commercial breaks, but that prompted a backlash, so they scrapped that idea. So even when Hollywood knows they need to shorten the show… they just can’t do it. And this year, they didn’t even have a host monologue! No one wants to invest over three hours watching the Hollywood prom and speechifying. Just get to awarding! (Full disclosure: I didn’t invest three hours in the show, either. That’s what Twitter is for. It should tell you something that in less than 45 minutes on Twitter, I can get the highlights and the winners, and then move on.)

2) Harvey Weinstein is the demon they cannot exorcise.
While Weinstein himself is now persona non grata in Hollywood, his stench remains everywhere. Weinstein had his hand in the making of too many careers, and Hollywood still can’t come to grips with how they continued to enable him for so many years. THEY. ALL. KNEW.

And those who are still running the show are some who benefited from Weinstein’s power. Including Academy Award co-producer Donna Gigliotti, who was highligted in a particularly damning Twitter thread by reporter Yashar Ali. She won an Oscar with Harvey Weinstein – and turned a blind eye to his victims.
https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1099830862957314048
https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1099830864886681600
With Weinstein now out of the way, Hollywood is hoping the public forgets their sins. But those sins keep coming back.

3) Best Editing: Bryan Singer
The film “Bohemian Rhapsody” about the band Queen won a few Oscars last night, including Best Actor for Rami Malek, who played Freddie Mercury.

You know what you didn’t hear last night? The name “Bryan Singer.”

since u wouldn't know it from watching the #oscars pic.twitter.com/epGU6mZxL9

— andy levy (@andylevy) February 25, 2019

Bryan Singer is currently also persona non grata after The Atlantic broke the story of his raping and harassing teenage boys who worked with him. Singer was a well-known director, and it’s like he didn’t even exist tonight. Not one word about him or his victims was ever brought up. If Hollywood is ever going to get rid of the rot that didn’t begin or end with the exposure of Harvey Weinstein, it needs to throw some harsh sunlight on the continuing abuses. And after what we saw tonight, they just can’t do it. Let’s just pretend that it never happened and never speak the names. And yet these are our “moral betters” who feel free to lecture the public about being tolerant and loving and voting against Donald Trump.

4) Social Justice Hollywood can never be satisfied.
Initially, it was a good night for SJW intersectional Hollywood. Both best supporting actor and best supporting actress were won by African American actors, “Black Panther” won best costuming, best production design, and best original score, and Spike Lee won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. But then the best picture award was given to “Green Book,” and no one was happy.

Spike Lee was visibly angry when "Green Book" was announced as the winner of best picture at the Oscars, waving his arms in disgust and appearing to try to storm out of the Dolby Theatre before he was stopped at the doors. He returned to his seat when the speeches were over.

— Andrew Dalton (@andyjamesdalton) February 25, 2019

I’ve looked all around Twitter and found that very few people actually liked this movie, but it was written as Oscar bait – a spin on “Driving Miss Daisy” with the white guy driving the black musician around. And yet, in a crowded best picture field full of virtue signaling (there were 8 movies up for the award), it won thanks to a “preferential ballot” system. Those on Twitter who were hoping for a “Moonlight” moment were disappointed.

This is Hollywood’s own fault. They’ve created a monster that can never be satisfied, and when the “wrong” movie gets the award, well… Twitter implodes. The overcrowded field kind of reminds me of an overcrowded primary… but I digress. Maybe they should just nominate popular movies that people like, and then people would pay attention to the awards? How insane would that be? But a comic book movie might win – *gasp!* – and we can’t have that! We must only have movies that are provoking and political and artistic, not POPULAR.

Which is why Hollywood will never learn. They won’t shorten the show, they can’t get rid of the perverts and criminals they still celebrate, and they will never accept that they are in a money-making business whose job it is to entertain people, not lecture them on how imperfect or racist or unwoke they are. Because, after all, they are the “beautiful people” who dress up and give themselves awards. Therefore, they are BETTER than the rest of us who merely pay to see them work – and not even declining revenue will convince them otherwise. But if the viewers don’t tune in to see them congratulate themselves, THAT hurts. After all, if the viewership numbers continue to drop, Hollywood might have to change their ways. And they’ve already proved they can’t do that.

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Featured image via Pixabay, Pixabay license