|
The real questions are:
Why AREthe awards political (when they are)? AND Who will profit from the awards program?
These people make a LOT of money. It is not anything like what it used to be in the decades after the McCarthy brutalities on the Hollywood region. That bastard squashed a system that was developing rapidly by slandering and ruining people.
The people on stage TODAY are very different for the most part. There are many people there with a lot of money. There are also people there with agendas of one type or another. The winners tonight did not, by and large, live through the desolation laid waste by McCarthy. They are a product of a reformed and far more commercialized industry. They still have compassion for the historical interests of their industry, but that is not the defining character of the people anymore.
These people are mostly filthy rich, and that is not only because they are talented. Hey...I'm talented! Really! These people are also both very smart and very lucky people. If they choose to use their money (which largely is their influence, as the bulk of the profit from this awards show airing lies with the winning artist's financiers, and the artists themselves) for a political cause, I assure you that they will be much more cunning than to air some blunt attack across the airwaves.
Michael got stepped on by an elephant! That is very funny, and ONLY works because Michael himself appeared. That means that this little act was carefully prepared and considered long before it was aired, by ALL parties. Noone can deny that. That was a pro-Republican joke if I've ever seen one, and I laughed my ass off as I always do at good humor.
In other words, we watched rich people who don't support the current handling of VAST QUANTITIES of US resources tell a joke to make their opponents laugh. Why? To diffuse the tension. To relax the audience. To make the audience more responsive. It's OK to be in the room together. And it worked.
Back to the big question: who profited tonight?
It seems VERY clear and undeniable. An underdog creative type guy who enjoys being outside the mainstream (it doesn't bother him that he must, I assume, never comb his hair) is about to exponentially multiply the wealth that he created through a project. Also, the country of New Zealand has and will prosper from tonight. An underdog production company bet the bank on the Lord of the Rings...and won. BIG TIME WON. Time/Warner, after having removed the AOL from their list of wins to their list of losses, now has a major win. For these larger companies, we're talking billions of dollars spread out over several years. That is a big thing.
I'd be willing to bet that Bush* didn't watch the Awards this year.
Keo
|