Surviving The Golden Globs

Last night, wife kitteh watched the Golden Glob Awards. I managed to avoid most of it, but had to sit through the last 45 minutes or so. It was only mildly horrible, ameliorated by the fact that I'd heard all of the speeches before. Out of the six years those 45 minutes took, three things jumped out at me.

• Some aging witch won best actress for the movie, "The Wife." She got up and told us all how her dad was oppressive and how her mother never was able to pursue her dreams, whatever those were. From this, we were supposed to generalize that women have terrible lives, thanks to the patriarchy.
  
  She didn't mention what dad did for a living. Maybe he pursued his passions by repairing high tension power lines in western Massachusetts in the middle of winter. Maybe he shoved a lawnmower around the hillsides of Mississippi in July. Whatever it was, he was living high on the patriarchal hog while mom stayed home, a slave.
   
• Speaking of slavery, there was a winning movie about a black musician and a white bigot traveling the South together in 1960. Ah, 1960. A sacred year, that. We love movies out of 1960, it's the height of Jim Crow which we were told is still with us and, as the winner said in his speech, possibly even worse today. Right.
  
  Funny thing about the Jim Crow laws. They were laws, as in rules enforced by the government  meant to keep a population in line, a population which might break them. The government feared that individuals, allowed to act as individuals, would fraternize across racial lines. These same activist Hollywood types love the government and love regulations. Careful riding that tiger, boys and girls. You could always discover that the massively powerful government decides to throw you off and eat you, the way it IRS-ate conservatives under Obama. It all depends on the current mood of the tiger, doesn't it?
   
• Love was mentioned several times as a motivating factor. Love for everyone! The forces of Hate are all around us and we must resist them, but not with love. No, the forces of Hate must be resisted with hate and the "untold" stories that every nominated movie was telling in ALL CAPS and every speech was extolling in ALL CAPS must be told. And told. And told. And told. Good Lord, it was boring.

At the end, wife kitteh shocked me. She said, "That was awful." Having learned to avoid snarking during these things - she's more important than having my obnoxious opinions aired - I asked why she thought that. She said the hosts weren't funny. I could have added that it's kind of hard to be funny while wagging your finger at the camera, but I think we both knew that.

I have no idea who these ciphers were, but they hosted the show. Badly.