And the Academy for most sycophantic audience goes to....

I hadn't meant to blog today, but I woke early, and with a thought in my head, so here it is. Have you been rather disgusted with Hollywood lately? I know I have. For example, here's Sean Penn, whose Katrina charades need no introduction (and the less said about his Iran reports the better): Or how about that charming Kanye West? Perhaps the delightful Pierce Brosnan who seems to imply that George Bush is functioning under some sort of alias, aimed at flimflamming the American people about his nefarious purposes. Well, people, I hate to say it, but modern Hollywood is our fault. These airheads weren't born in a vacuum. We go to their movies (although in ever smaller numbers), we suck up magazines with their images on the coverage, and, for reasons that are utterly unclear to me, we insist on watching their self-indulgent, self-congratulatory Academy Awards Show. It's this last one that really gets me, because the audience fascination with this show reveals, more than anything else, how we've been suckered into Hollywood's view of its own importance. I mean, think about it: Think of a really useful industry, such as insurance, or plumbing, or teachers, or home building, or utilities, or just about anything I can think of including street sweeping, and tell me if you care the teeniest bit about their in-industry awards. I bet you don't, but the top utility provider, or the best teacher, or the leading plumber in your community is a whole lot more useful and important to you than some prancing, preening, incredibly badly and vulgarly dressed Hollywood star. More than the clothes, though, think about the movies Hollywood and personalities that Hollywood values. Real people flock to see The Passion of the Christ; Hollywood drools over Michael Moore. Real people consistently turn out to see family value films; Hollywood awards its highest accolade to a movie promoting euthanasia (a family value only if you're anxious to hasten your inheritance). I could go on, but I'd get dull and you get the idea. My point, really, is that we tolerate this; we give these vapid, ill-informed, uneducated people the go ahead. America used to demand that its stars be Americans, and they acted accordingly. I don't need to remind you of the patriotism with which Hollywood responded to WWII, but I do want to point out the number of stars who enlisted, regardless of their careers. They put their lives where their beliefs were. As long as we encourage Hollywood, not just by going to the movies, but by snatching up magazines about stars, frantically emailing articles about them, and giving their boring, self-congratulatory awards show high ratings, we're going to be telling them that we approve of them -- not only in the movies they make, but in the lives they lead, and the ideas they promote.