Far-left pundits are spending massive amounts of time and energy expressing outrage over the fact that women and “people of color” didn’t get as many Academy Award nominations as white men. In other words, it’s another normal day in show business.
News journalists are fomenting the outrage, telling the masses that “institutionalized discrimination” is at work as the Oscar nominees this year don’t include a diverse range of people.
Not surprisingly, there are a few obvious points that mainstream news journalists are clearly ignoring. First of all, the Academy Award nominations always involve surprise snubs and wins. Pundits and movie-goers alike are always complaining that a certain film, director, actor or actress was unfairly snubbed; the only difference this year is that race is being included in the outrage.
The list of snubbed people and films this year doesn’t just include the omission of people of color and female directors. Christian Bale, Robert De Niro, and Taron Egerton — all white male actors — all failed to make the Best Actor nomination list despite starring in high-profile productions. But activists are only concerned with the fact that Eddie Murphy wasn’t nominated.
Let’s talk about the facts here. Only five people made the best director list. And while it is surprising that amazingly talented female directors didn’t make the cut, the fact is that not every great movie or director is going to get nominated every single time.
“Little Women”, directed by Greta Gerwig, did make the Oscar list for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture even though Greta Gerwig wasn’t nominated for best director. The Best Animated Short, Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short Subject categories contain plenty of women, a fact that most people are ignoring. Julia Rieichert, Tamara Kotevska, Kristine Samuelson, Laura Nix, Daria Kashcheeva, and others are all honored for their contributions to the world of film.
At the same time, the critics who are calling for more “people of color” to be included in the nominations are trashing the sole African-American actress nominated for the Lead Actress Academy Award just because she acted in “Harriet”, a movie that didn’t bring break the box-office or express any far-left worldview.
Given the fact that Hollywood happenings don’t really affect the day to day lives of average Americans, it’s easy to ignore the outrage. However, the problem with this outrage is that it’s not just limited to the Academy Awards.
Pundits are freaking out over the fact that people of color who decided to run for the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency have either dropped out or failed to qualify for the recent debate held earlier this month. Some far-left educational institutions think that STEM course requirements should be changed for the sole reason of attracting more women to the field. Others believe that standardized testing in schools should be eliminated because it discriminates against African-American and Hispanic students.
If far-left progressives had their way, there would likely be gender-based, racial quotas for every single thing. Instead of giving awards and recognition to the best individuals, people would be recognized based on arbitrary characteristics — not their actual talent. The result would be a sad world in which hard work goes unrewarded.
