The Oscars have been withering on the vine for the last six or seven years due to woke politics and are pretty much all but toast, but in the view of the Los Angeles Times editorial board and an editorial they posted on 12.27, they’re not toasty enough.

“Let’s really stick a fork in this sad, dying annual celebration of movies,” a 12.27 LAT editorial essentially says. “Let’s urge AMPAS and the TV academy to kill gender-based acting Oscars in order to satisfy the political goals of the trans community and their progressive allies.”

Everyone understands that the lore of the Academy Awards telecast is all but finished. The viewing audience been shrinking over the last several years, especially among Millennial and Zoomers and double especially since the disastrous, pandemic-sieged Soderbergh Oscars of April 2021.

My heart is broken over this. I used to feel joyful during Oscar shows; now there’s almost nothing. James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Billy Wilder, Cary Grant, Ernest Borgnine, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, William Wyler and William Holden are weeping in heaven and taking turns pounding the refrigerator door.

But in order to finalize the death process, the show needs one more kitchen knife shoved between the ribs, and the gender neutral acting initiative might just be the dagger point that does the job.

On 8.23.22 the Spirit Award honchos decided to abandon gender categories for acting awards, more or less following the lead of the Gotham Award guys. Two months later (on 10.12.22) a woke cabal within the Los Angeles Film Critics Association adopted the same policy, despite nearly half of LAFCA being opposed to gender neutral.

And now this L.A. Times editorial has gotten into the act.

I said this last August and I’ll say it again: “If the Academy decides to go gender-neutral with the Oscar acting awards, the eclipse will be total and absolute, and I mean beyond the level of anything dreamt of by Michelangelo Antonioni.

“In a populist cultural sense as well as aesthetically, the Oscars will have announced to the Joe and Jane Popcorn public that after six or seven years of fiddling around with secular woke passions and priorities, the Oscars are truly no longer about engaging even a semblance of a mass audience, or certainly in any way that seems to matter.

“Yes, Virginia, the Oscars are about wokesterism, secular industry politics and (this is key) elbowing older, insufficiently progressive white guys aside…about a tiny cabal of progressive fanatics who are determined to de-popularize not just the Oscars but movies themselves.

If AMPAS manages to eliminate gender-based acting awards, Average Joes and Janes will simply walk away and stay away…the more impassioned among them (i.e., the Oscar torch-bearers and sentimentalists) will raise their fists and voices and say “stop this insanity, stop this bullshit…outside the woke realm men are men and women are women, and they generate different moods and expressions and ways of living and processing the ups and downs of living…stop this bullshit and come down to earth.”

All hail the death of the great American art form called movies…right? All hail the political instruction that has overtaken a significant portion of mainstream movies and the casting process altogether. The Oscars were launched in the late ’20s and are now, 95 years later, on the verge of completely erasing themselves from mass public consciousness. All hail presentism!

And why? Several reasons and factors are behind this, but in today’s context it boils down to this: the non-binary trans community wants to strengthen its political influence and power. And to accomplish this goal, one of the most populist, mass-outreach, Joe and Jane Popcorn aspects of the Oscar telecast — gender-based acting categories, which have been with us for nearly a century and in fact for hundreds of years beforehand — has to be dissolved.

What the overwhelming majority of movie lovers might prefer is not important. The aims of a small activist minority is what counts.

Here’s a portion of the 12.27 L.A. Times editorial, which is titled “Oscars and Emmys still use gendered categories. That outdated practice should go.”

Excerpt #1: “It makes sense for every awards organization that still uses it to scotch this outdated [gender] categorization. Why shouldn’t performances by all actors, regardless of gender designation, be judged together? They all work together in a movie or TV show. And the categorizations don’t fit every performer.

“Prominent nonbinary performers including Emma Corrin, who was nominated for but did not win an Emmy for their portrayal of Diana, Princess of Wales, in Season 4 of “The Crown,” have argued for non-gendered categories to include those who don’t solely identify as male or female. (Corrin was entered into one of the Emmy acting categories for women at a time when they were not using nonbinary pronouns, according to a BBC interview.)

“But there’s one important thing to remember: Gender neutrality does not mean gender equality.

Excerpt #2: “Dissolving gendered categories for Oscars or Emmys would not magically give women parity with men in accessing substantial acting roles and being celebrated for their work. Despite some notable recent gains for women, the entertainment industry is still weighted in favor of men. The last thing we would want to see are nongendered acting categories full of male nominees and winners.

“For decades women had less access to substantial acting roles — the kind that get awards — although studies show there is improvement on this front. According to the 2022 UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report on films, women made up 47.2% of leads in 2021 films. The second part of the UCLA report on the 2020-21 season found that women made up 44.3% of broadcast scripted leads — and higher percentages in lead roles in cable and streamed shows.

“However that still doesn’t mean women have as much access as men to the kinds of roles or the kinds of films that win awards. According to the UCLA film report, only 25% of films that won Oscars in any category at the 2021 show had a female lead.

“Awards play a part in the ecosystem of Hollywood. An acting award can raise the profile and influence of the winner. It would be unsettling if a new approach to award-bestowing makes it even more difficult for women to win an award and achieve that profile.

“But it’s past time to get rid of these categories — and we believe that awards shows can smartly lay out a plan to do that.”

“Gender Neutral Body Snatchers,” posted on 8.23.22:

“In terms of the acting awards, Spirit Award wokesters have announced an abandonment of gender categories. No more Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor or Best Supporting Actress categories. Which is what the Gotham guys did a year or two ago. It’s insane but real…they’re doing it.

“Idea #1 is to emphasize how different New York and L.A. wokester culture is from tens of millions of Joe and Jane Popcorn movie lovers in every corner of the nation.

“Idea #2 states that “non-woke film fans may love the idea of gender-based acting categories for now, but we are leading the way to a bold and brave new realm…henceforth we are living in a gender-neutral world, whether you like it or not. Wake up and woke up and join us…it’s a joyful revolution!”

Sasha Stone’s rant about the Spirits going gender-neutral is a near-perfect thing:

“The Spirit Awards have decided to move to “gender neutral” categories, thus stripping the last tiny bit of fun the awards race had left. the Gotham awards have already done this, and my guess is that BAFTA, with their committee-driven nominees, will soon follow suit. So now they’ll need committees to choose not just an equitable collection of performances, but nominees that must represent every single spectrum of every marginalized group. People of color, non-binary people, people with disabilities, perhaps plus-sized people — I mean, all we seem to do now on the left is argue about which words we’re all supposed to use to not offend a single person, or get called out as a problematic witch on Twitter.

“I guess by now we have to ask “what is the point of any of this?” We’re all keeping it alive by bumping the chest and blowing air into the lungs. But activists are imposing their ideology on nearly every corner of the industry, making film awards — and films in general — something other than what their original purpose has always been. And honestly, what are these awards going to be but a ceremony inside of a devout religion?

“Maybe clinging to the past, or pretending film awards are meant to do anything but serve their newfound religious ideology, seems a bit pointless by now. People aren’t really all that thrilled with ‘gender neutral”’ anything, except perhaps bathrooms. All you need to remind you of this is the success of Top Gun and Elvis. Why do you think the Kardashians are a multi-billion empire? You don’t think sexy females are a hot selling point? That is why there is much excitement around the Best Actress category. It is the All About Eve of it all. But no one is going to listen to me. This train has left the station and there is no bringing it back.

When SNL made this parody ad five years ago they were obviously goofing on wokester fanatics. Who knew it would become an actual reality?