HEisthumbs–upon Uri Berliner’s 4.9FreePressessay about how NPR’s entrenched liberal dogma and orthodoxy led to a pattern of eating its own tail when Donald Trump came to power. Most of the article tells the straight dope.
NPR’s ideological and institutional opposition to a flood of aggressive Trump malignancies over the last seven years (2017 until today) has led to the government-funded org preaching to a much smaller choir, Berliner says. Advanced wokeness has resulted in listener trust levels dropping considerably since 2011.
Many of Berliner’s judgments seem unassailable and inarguable. Many but not all.
Berliner is 100% correct in the matter of NPR’s coverage of the nearly four-year-old George Floyd murder and their subsequent obsessive filtering of everything by way of identity and identity politics in particular (all white folks are guilty of overt or unconscious racial bias and are therefore deserving of constant correction, somber self-reflection and shaming while all POCs are blessed and beautiful).
Berliner is also completely correct in stating that NPR suppressed coverage of the Wuhanlableaktheory, which was initially derided as possibly racist but which is now recognized as the most likely explanation of what triggered the pandemic.
But his article also strongly implies that suspected Russiagate collusion was bullshit when the Mueller Report concluded that while there wasn’t sufficient evidence to warrant prosecution, there was a coordinated Russian government-led effort to hurt or compromise Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, and that the Trumpies knew they were benefitting from this and responded with glee.
It also states that the Hunter Biden laptopstory and corruptioncharges were and are a legit news story when in fact it’s always been a ho-hummer. The facts merely expose a pattern of garden-variety influence peddling — unsavory and even odious behavior but small change at the end of the day. This establishment is shocked, shocked to learn that Hunter is a bad-egg son whose sordid activities have rubbed off on his dad to some extent. Sorry but it’s nothing to have a major heart attack over.
These two caveats aside, hive (i.e., the NPR kind) is jive.
Remember that Sylvester Stallone didn’t insult any TulsaKing background people totheirface. Nor did he share his reportedlyunkindcomments with various people on the Atlanta-based set.
According to Variety’s Kate Aurthur, Stallone shared said opinions only with director Craig Zisk, privately. The unspecified remarks made their way to Facebook via a second-hand eavesdropping — an overheard conversation that was passed along.
Is Stallone an elderly Republican tough guy who doesn’t adhere to woke social standards? Yes. Did he share views about allegedly unattractive extras that certain parties found offensive? Apparently. Should Stallone henceforth strive to share less ruthless opinions about the appearance of this or that coworker? Yeah, he should.
A few days ago I twitched once again at the sight of the term "sex positive." I've riffed about this once or twice before, but this time it was in a Zack SharfVariety piece about The Idea of You (Amazon Prime, 5.2.24). It’s about an affair between Solène Marchand (Anne Hathaway), a 40 year-old single mom, and Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), the 24-year-old lead singer of August Moon, a super-hot boy band.
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HE is passively into discouraging or diminishing interest in Proof of Concept Accelerator movies...no offense. I simply wish to align myself with the tens of millions of relatively slender, well-educated squares out there (i.e., those who are not obese or MAGA or who don't wear whitesides)...an alignment with the 95% of the Americans who don't live inside the progressive woke-trans-nonbinary bubble...Americans who inherently don't love the idea of white-male-hating narratives.
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Everyone in the blogosphere (critics, columnists, YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagramers) was too chicken to say what I began saying early last fall — that Lily Gladstone was out of her depth as a Best Actress contender, and that she was relying entirely on an identity campaign. Nobody else had HE’s cast-iron cojones in this regard.
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10:13 pm: And here we go with the official Lily Gladstone celebration — the Best identity Oscar campaign for Best Actress. And…holy shit, Emma Stone wins for Best Actress! Justice, truth, radiance!! The Movie Godz approve!! The Academy actually voted to support a performance and not a politically woke proclamation!! Merit prevailed over progressive instruction!!
10:07 pm: Chris Nolan wins the Best Director Oscar for Oppenheimer. A locked-down win for months. Congrats to a first-rate filmmaker. I found Oppenheimer a difficult sit and will probably never see it again, but Nolan did a “good” job. He’s a class act, although his version of 2001: A Space Odyssey was not a good thing.
10 pm: The Best Actor moment arrives, and may we please, please see emotional justice done by giving the Oscar to The Holdovers‘ Paul Giamatti? Can we pleaase tell those SAG-AFTRA mouth-breathers to take a hike? Please? No — the Oscar goes to Cillian Murphy, which gives me further trepidation about Gladstone (another SAG-AFTRA favorite) winning in her category. A nice-guy British actor wins for playing a cold-eyed space alien.
9:45 pm: As expected Ludwig Goransson‘s Oppenheimer music takes the Oscar for Best Score. Billie Eilish takes Best Song Oscar for Barbie. Neither creative effort knocked me out. Congrats to all but…
9:33 pm: Great camerawork and dynamic editing on Ryan Gosling‘s Barbie song, “I’m Ken” or “I”m Just Ken” or whatever it’s called. Nice overhead Busby Berkeley shot. Excellent color design, great lighting and choreography. First-rate all the way. Hats off.
9:30 pm: The Zone of Interest wins Best Sound Oscar. That eerie humming sound, right?….subtle design, absolute malevolence.
9:20 pm: The show has been underway for two hours, 25 minutes so far. And Best Actor presentation is just around the corner. And congrats to WesAnderson winning his very first Oscar for anything. (i.e., Henry Sugar).
9:17 pm: Best Cinematography goes to Oppenheimer and the brilliant Hoyte van Hoytema.
9:03 pm: Best Documentary Short and Feature presentation. I have no passionate dogs in these hunts. The Last Repair Shop…congrats! 20 Days in Mariupol (as expected) wins Best Feature Doc Oscar!
8:50 pm: The low-budgeted Godzilla Minus One wins the Visual Effects Oscar! HE approves!! Wait…clumsy, sloppy acceptance speech…taking too long…get it together! Play them off! And now the Film Editing Oscar…Oppenheimer! Honestly? I didn’t think the editing in that film was knock-out level…did anyone? Another coat-tail thing.
8:37 pm: And now the Best Supporting Actor presentation, obviously going to Oppenheimer‘s Robert Downey, Jr. Nice tributes given to all five nominees. Classy, well-written…perfectly handled. RDJ: “I’d like to thank my terrible childhood and the Academy, in that order. Downey thanking his entertainment lawyer for helping him out during his unfortunate druggy period in the late ’90s (“bailing me out of the hoosegow”) was especially good.
‘ 8:29 pm: Tribute to the stunt community but no specific Oscar handed out. All hail the stunt work of the great Buster keaton!
8:27 pm: To no one’s surprise, The Zone of Interest wins Best Int’l Feature Oscar. Director Jonathan Glazer is calling out the horror of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
8:16 pm: Poor Things wins a third Oscar!! For costumes! Three in a row! Lily Gladstone is sweating bullets right now. John Cena‘s mostly nude walk-on was pretty good.
8:07 pm: Maestro‘s suoerb makeup doesn’t win the Oscar….Poor Things does instead. Willem Dafoe‘s facial prosthetics did the trick. And Poor Things wins the production design Oscar! Is this an indication that Emma Stone might take the Best Actress Oscar? is it possible that the Acadeemy might actually give that Oscar to the giver of the greatest performance? Is there a chance that Lily Gladstone‘s identiity play might not pan out?
8:02 pm: Billie Eilish‘s singing is fragile and breathy. But at least she looks nice for a change.
7:51 pm: Time for the Best Screenplay Oscars, Original and Adapted! And the winner of the Original category is Anatomy of a Fall. A political gender thing. The Holdovers should have won. Please give the Adapted Sceenplay Oscar to American Fiction….yes! As expected. Cord Jefferson! The first 45 to 50 minutes of this film are really satisfying. Excellent speech by Jefferson….”this has changed my life!”
7:40 pm: How many have seen War Is Over, winner of the Best Animated Short film? Will The Boy and the Heron win the Best Animated Feature Oscar? Yes!
7:25 pm: The Holdovers‘ Da’Vine joy Randolph is about th win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and good for her. Each nominee is receiving a special tribute from a past BSA winner….nice touch. All hail Rita Moreno, America Ferrara, Danielle Brooks, Jamie Lee Curtis/strong>! Da’Vine supreme!! All hail Alexander Payne for casting her. Da’Vine gives a tearful and passionate shout-out to her publicist, but doesn’t mention the publicist’s name. Paul Giamatti crying for her.
7:17 pm: I’m sorry but Cillian Murphy is a rather odd-looking person. For a change, Robert Downey, Jr.‘s evening apparel isn’t offensive. All hail Kimmel’s Killers of the Flower Moon-is-too-effing-long jokes. Kimmel’s simple black tux is very attractive, but the tie is too big. Dwayne Johnson‘s gray metallic tux is fairly awful. I love the below-the-line crew people taking a bow…”a ton of of overtime”!!
7:12 pm: Margot Robbie to Jimmy Kimmel on a bench: “You’re so beautiful.” Kimmel to Robbie: “I know. I haven’t eaten in three weeks. I’m so hungry.”
6:58 pm: The red carpet fashion show is too fast, fizzy and frothy…all hail the gray-haired, well-dressed Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things)! HE is the opposite of fast, frizzy and frothy…and that, for better or worse, is the brand.
‘ 6:47 pmBrendan Fraser looks good, considering that he’s well past his glammy peak. All hail Sterling K. Brown! All hail Holdovers hotshot great PauL Giamatti, whose Best Actor chances are under threat by Oppie‘s Cillian Murphy, whose prpminence is entirely due to the SAG-AFTRa community coasting along on the Oppie bandwagon….those reliable Chris Nolan coat-tails…Eugene Lee Yang appears in a stunning red ball gown…reminding us all that asserting one’s sexuality is extremely important in the overall scheme of things.
6:33 pm: Why did Billie Eilish decide to switcch strategy by trying to look attractive tonight?? She looked like a dressed-down dishrag at the Globe and SAG awards. Caitlin Wells reply: “To keep you on your toes.”
HE wants Poor Things‘ Emma Stone to win the Best Actress Oscar on Sunday night, and if not Stone then Anatomy of a Fall‘s Sandra Huller…please.
I’m just looking forward to a day in which identity won’t count for that much in Oscar voting. If you dip into your soul and bring the stuff that matters, then you’re eligible to be nominated and perhaps even likely to win. Quality, quality, quality of delivery.
Academy members voting to reject commonplace prejudice or blanket dismissals in decades or centuries past is primarily about them and not the actor or performance in question. Wokesters have been playing this trendy little game for six or seven years now, and it’s time to shut it down.
When the day comes that quality is valued more than equity or virtue-signalling, actors like Lily Gladstone will have to sink or swim based on their own chops, instincts and abilities…whether or not they can bring the necessary craft, depth and soul…a performance constructed from deep within or not at all.
Does anyone think that Da’Vine Joy Randolph‘s locked-in Best Supporting Actress win has anything whatsoever to do with identity? Okay, maybe a little but she’s been winning all season long because of how good she is in Alexander Payne‘s The Holdovers…period. I knew she was a slam-dunk Oscar nominee a half-hour after the film had begun screening in Telluride’s Werner Herzog theatre. I leaned over and muttered this to Sasha Stone.
Does anyone think that May December‘s Charles Melton was an early Best Supporting Actor favorite because he rode an identity horse (South Korean lineage + being a symbolic stand-in for underaged victims of sexual assault)? You’d better believe it, and thank God that nag gave out on him.
Does anyone believe that Sayonara‘s Miyoshi Umeki won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar over identity, way the hell back in 1958? She won because she played a selfless, devotional wife who died (along with Air Force husband Red Buttons**) due to racial prejudice. Plus her performance was significantly more affecting than the ones given by Carolyn Jones (The Bachelor Party), Elsa Lanchester (Witness for the Prosecution), Hope Lange (Peyton Place) and Diane Varsi (Peyton Place).
I realize that Gladstone’s identity campaign has stirred a sizable army of woke gladhanders and that the odds favor her winning, but this shit has to stop. It really does.
Posted by World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy on 3.6.24: “Can Gladstone win the Oscar despite not being nominated by BAFTA and her role being a supporting turn? She appears in less than 1/3 of Killers runtime (56 minutes), whereas Stone is practically in every scene of Poor Things. If Gladstone had been campaigned in the Supporting category then she’d already have that Oscar in the bag.”
One of the most horrifying Orwellian wokethink images mine eyes have ever beheld…I’m serious, I was there and I fucking snapped this photo…a N.Y. Times video ad inside the Washington, D.C metro, which first appeared in February ’22. Only two years ago, and one reason why Biden has reason to fear the wrath of the electorate.
This morning Blocked and Reported‘s Katie Herzog and Brad Palumboposted a discussion about last weekend’s Los Angeles sidewalk-cafe debate between the progressive-wokey, mask-wearing Taylor Lorenz and Libs of TikTok‘s conservative-minded Chaya Richik.
It’s asserted early on that Chaya, a Hebrew name, is pronounced “Haya.” That fits when you consider that l-chaim is pronounced “luh-hime.” The “ch” is basically an “h.”
For months honest, down-to-earth people have been saying that Celine Song's Past Lives is fine but calm down. But agenda-driven critics, various friends of A24 and industry elites pushing gender and identity activism have refused to back down, and so Past Lives has won the Best Film award at the Independent Spirit Awards.
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The Best Actress category represents the only major-category Oscar cliffhanger, of course — Poor Things‘ Emma Stone vs. Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone. And it’ll basically be decided during tonight’s SAG Awards telecast on Netflix.
HE is greatly concerned that the woke-minded SAG-AFTRA membership might vote to support Gladstone’s identity campaign (i.e., “put aside any notions of exceptional quality of performance — vote for me because I’m Native American”). Whoever wins tonight will almost certainly take the Best Actress Oscar, and so this is a fairly big deal as all the other Oscar categories have been pretty much decided upon or locked down.
I’ll be in West Orange, New Jersey when the decision comes down. I’m prepared to accept a Gladstone victory as long as everyone understands the woke bullshit dynamic, as a Lily win would have nothing to do with her having given a knockout performance, or one that could be fairly described as fascinating, audacious, richly-written, dig-down-and-touch-our-communal-soul, etc. What can I do if SAG-AFTRA tilts this way? Obviously nothing.
Three prognosticating know-it-alls — Jeff Sneider, Scott Feinberg and Clayton Davis— are predicting that Lily Gladstone will take the Best Actress Oscar after all.
May I ask what happened to the Emma Stone wave? Stone is an absolute total knockout in Poor Things, and it’s an actual lead performance as opposed to Gladstone’s supporting, half-somnambulant, less-is-less performance as Mollie Burkhart.
I’m not saying that anything has necessarily “happened” to Stone’s support, but I’ve been sensing that Stone and her people seem afraid to campaign with serious vigor, apparently out of fear that they might be seen as anti-Gladstone or anti-Native American or something in that realm, which is ridiculous.
Do I have to say this again? Enough with the damn DEI campaigns. The world is quaking, the woke thing is receding (just ask Bob Iger), and we all have to turn the cultural corner and get back to honoring performances based upon actual acting merit.
Yes, other political factors have always gone into wins but ethnicity has become too much of a thing, and it’s time to cut that idea down to size.
Gladstone has had a great bountiful time over the last several months (or since last May if you count the Cannes debut of Killers of the Flower Moon) and has derived a huge career boost. It’s been a happy chapter all around, and she’ll be completely fine in the years to come.
Enough with the ethnic-identity-warrants-awards mindset. We did that between ’17 and ’23, and now it’s over. Move past it, get with the new program, enough. We are here to go.