The Academy Awards, Hollywood’s annual prom celebrating the awesomeness of itself, its wealth, and how much it CARES so much more than the rest of the world does, was held last night. It was as dull as dishwater.

Remember how Ricky Gervais absolutely ripped his rich and entitled audience at the Golden Globes up one side and down the other? Well, after his comments today on Twitter, when asked what he would say if he was hosting the Oscars tonight, he offered up these gems:

“I can’t wait to hear all your inspirational speeches about equality, and it’s great that the 3 hours you’re here tonight is the only time your badly paid migrant house staff will get some time off to sleep this week” https://t.co/fsFbdDkv6u

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) February 9, 2020

“It’s great to see such diversity in the room tonight. Rich sex pests of all shapes and sizes” https://t.co/fsFbdDkv6u

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) February 9, 2020

Honestly, those two Tweets were better and more insightful than anything else said onstage tonight. The show had no host once again, so the opening remarks were delivered by previous hosts Steve Martin and Chris Rock. If you were expecting funny, you were sorely disappointed. This is Hollywood, where even funny people can only be funny about the RIGHT things. You can mock Jeff Bezos for being ultra-rich and divorced, but you can’t mention Harvey Weinstein. You can poke fun at the Oscars for not nominating a woman for Best Director, because intersectionality über alles for the rich and pretty people. Popular films that people actually went to go watch are just so gauche and don’t win awards. We know we weren’t woke enough! Let us gently mock our unwokeness and vow to do better!

If you managed to stay awake for that absolute snooze of an opening monologue, there wasn’t much else to look forward to. And the first major award winner of the night pretty much broke all the Gervais rules in one go. Brad Pitt won Best Supporting Actor, and gave a shout-out to… John Bolton??? (Not a sentence I ever thought I would write.)

Brad Pitt at the #Oscars : They told me I only have 45 seconds up here, which is 45 seconds more than the Senate gave John Bolton this week… I'm thinking Quentin does a movie about it and in the end, the adults do the right thing. pic.twitter.com/086BqyU0iD

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) February 10, 2020

Ah yes, that “strange new respect” that liberals suddenly discover when a conservative says or does something that they agree with. Like Brad Pitt knew who John Bolton was before last week. I guess it helps to have former political speechwriters now ghostwriting acceptance speeches for award season, hmmm?

We still got rambling weird stuff from Joaquin Phoenix and Renée Zellweger, but by the time they were talking, everyone had been bored to sleep or turned off the broadcast once “Toy Story 4” won Best Animated Film and “Hair Love” – which is utterly charming and poignant – won Best Animated Short Film (even though we had to listen to more politically correct chatter). Then the we had to listen to an actual quote from the Communist Manifesto get worked into the Obama-praised winner of Best Documentary Feature. And by the time “Parasite” swept both Best Director and Best Picture at the end of three long hours, no one cared anymore that all of Hollywood was breaking their arms to pat themselves on the back for giving the award to a foriegn language film that supposedly deals with “wealth inequality” and “class hierarchy” while seeing a whole lot of very happy Korean people on the stage.

It will be interesting to see where the ratings go for the broadcast, but this awards season has not been promising. Hollywood has lectured and bored us all into a stupor, and the majority of the American public (especially in that coveted 18-49 demographic) is checking Twitter, maybe watching a clip on YouTube, and then ignoring the rest of it.

Now Hollywood will return to its regularly scheduled programming: making blockbusters for cash, making politically correct think pieces to pass around at award season next year, and lecturing the rest of us on how much better they are than us. Because they CARE.

Featured image via Pixabay, Pixabay license