“After 45 years of scattershot liberal protest, the Academy Awards are now the perfect bully pulpit from which to address the already glaring moral calamity of Donald Trump’s presidency,” Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has written in a 1.30 thinkpiece.

“Certainly, a balance needs to be struck: The point of the evening is to celebrate the movies nominated, and politics shouldn’t overshadow that. But I do believe that politics can blend with that. America will be watching — in greater numbers, I suspect, than we’ve seen for a long time. And not just blue-state America. I mean Trump voters too (do you think that none of them went to see La La Land?), and also swing voters, who may already be feeling a touch of buyer’s remorse, and who may have begun to peel off from the Trump crusade.

“What’s required is a way to speak truth — artfully and memorably, the way Meryl Streep did — to the Oscar-night viewers who are movie lovers who are citizens who have the power to change America. What’s required is a moment that can translate into a meme of protest. A lot of liberals have already begun to realize [that] the only way to defeat Donald Trump is to fight fire with fire — and on Academy Awards night, that means fighting show business with show business.”