Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

March 7, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show

13:04

Ep. 260 - Oscar Night’s Big Winner: Trump!

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	On Sunday night, Moonlight shocked America by defeating heavily favored Best Picture competitor La La Land.
	It won for one simple reason.
	Those in Hollywood decided that intersectionality should defeat Hollywood's self-aggrandizement this year.
	Here's the thing about Moonlight.
	It's not a very good movie.
	It's interesting in the way that all character studies are kind of interesting.
	It's a look at a place and at a time and at a person, but it doesn't truly uplift or soar or actually do much of anything.
	It won because the Academy voters preferred not to hear another year of griping about hashtag Oscars so white, and because those same voters could feel good about supposedly slapping Donald Trump in the face with diversity.
	It's no coincidence that an Oscars ceremony that opened with Kimmel tweaking President Trump, remember last year when it seemed like the Oscars was racist?
	Ended with the Academy giving the Best Picture Oscar to Brokeback Inner City Miami.
	This isn't to say there can't be a great movie made about a black gay coming-of-age story.
	There can, but this wasn't it.
	This isn't the first time the Academy has bowed to political correctness rather than quality, of course.
	And this year's Oscar battle featured two battling Hollywood priorities.
	Honoring itself, and honoring the most politically correct picture of the year.
	In recent years, this battle has become pretty much the entirety of the Best Picture race.
	In 2014, Hollywood rewarded its own importance with Birdman instead of the far superior Whiplash or American Sniper.
	In 2013, Hollywood rewarded the rather forgettable 12 Years a Slave instead of Gravity or Dallas Buyers Club.
	In 2012, Hollywood gave an Oscar to Argo.
	Yay!
	Hollywood does foreign policy!
	Instead of Zero Dark Thirty or Lincoln.
	In 2005, Hollywood had its biggest PC off in a Best Picture fight between Brokeback Mountain, Crash, and Munich.
	Capote was actually a better picture than all of those three.
	One of the reasons Hollywood no longer rakes in the big bucks other than on tentpole features is that it sees only the profound movies as those that center on intersectional concerns, upholding the virtue of identity politics or the importance of art itself, rather than movies that tell people stories that they want to see.
	La La Land is a far better, more watchable movie than Moonlight, but there were at least three other movies that were better than either this year.
	Hell or High Water, Arrival, and Hacksaw Ridge, and all three were nominated.
	That doesn't include what I thought was the most entertaining flick of the year, 10 Cloverfield Lane.
	Unfortunately for those pictures, they weren't concerned with black gay children or the wonders of Hollywood.
	If somebody ever makes a movie about a half-black, half-Native American bisexual transgender trying to make his or her way in Hollywood, you can hand them the Oscar right now.
	And this is how you know Hollywood is dying.
	Instead of telling particular stories with general appeal, Hollywood tells stories that appeal only to themselves.
	They reassure themselves of their importance every single year, either by making movies telling them how important they are, or by making movies trying to show how important they are by taking on the issue of the day in after-school special fashion.
	It doesn't make for good entertainment, which is why TV, which actually tells stories rather than getting hung up on the self-important nonsense of the movie industry, now outranks the movie industry in terms of quality.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	So we'll talk everything Oscars in just a minute.
	We will also be talking about the Democrats picking a new leader and what you need to know about Tom Perez, that new leader.
	But first, we have to say thank you to our sponsors over at My Patriot Supply.
	So, if you're concerned about the failure of local government to help you in time of need, if you're concerned about an economic downturn, if you're concerned about a natural disaster, you know, the levees breaking like they did in Northern California or New Orleans, or you're worried about just a natural disaster of any sort, a tornado, And you need to make sure that you are safe and secure and that you have what you need for your family.
	You need to talk to my friends at My Patriot Supply.
	They have a 4-week emergency food supply for only $99, which is a pretty solid price for 4 weeks of emergency food supply.
	It's something you buy once and then you never really have to buy again.
	These things last for 25 years.
	You order now at 888-803-1413, 888-803-1413, or you can go online to preparewithben.com.
	That's breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 28 days.
	So in case the government can't help you or your local community can't help you, you're prepared.
	And for $99, you never have to worry about it again.
	It stays fresh again for up to 25 years.
	It's only $99 plus free shipping, limit two per caller, because you don't really have to worry about it beyond that.
	888-803-1413 at preparewithben.com.
	Again, if you're truly concerned, you should be, about making sure your family has enough food to eat if a crisis hits, whether it's an economic crisis or a natural disaster.
	You talk to my friends over at MyPatriotSupply living in California.
	This is one of the companies that we turn to with regard to helping out friends and family.
	Given the fact that earthquakes are a real possibility out here and everywhere across the country, there is the possibility of natural disaster.
	You need to talk to my friends over at MyPatriotSupply.
	888-803-1413.
	888-803-1413.
	PrepareWithBen.com is the place to go online to get your MyPatriotSupply four-week supply of emergency food.
	Okay, so, we can jump right into the Oscars.
	So, the big winner at the Oscars last night was not Moonlight.
	The big winner at the Oscars last night was Donald Trump.
	That was the big winner at the Oscars last night, because Donald Trump basically could sit there and watch Hollywood make a mockery of itself.
	Sally Cohn, one of my favorite people on the left of MSNBC and CNN fame, you remember her, hands up don't shoot, Sally Cohn tweeted out right before the Oscars that she hoped every single speech was political.
	To which I tweeted, so does every Republican in the country.
	We all want every speech to be political.
	Because the more political these speeches are, the better off Republicans are, because watching all of these All of these sort of comforted, rich, limousine liberal socialists ripping on America is really something that off-puts a lot of voters, and people react to that by voting for people on the Republican side of the aisle.
	Hollywood has never driven people into the arms of the Democrats, except through kind of their subtle cultural moments, but they don't drive people into the arms of the Democrats by just shouting about how terrible Republicans are.
	This is something that Hollywood gets wrong.
	The stuff that Hollywood is good at Creating story, creating character.
	That stuff can help convince people that Democrats are right.
	But it doesn't convince people Democrats are right when Marlon Brando sends up Sachin Littlefeather at the Oscars in 1973, a Native American spokeswoman, to pick up his award and rant and rave about how America's means to the Native Americans.
	Nobody voted Democrat because of that.
	And nobody voted Democrat in 2003 because Michael Moore got up at the Oscars and talked about the fictional president, George W. Bush, getting us into a fictional war.
	Hollywood people think that we want to hear what they have to say.
	We don't.
	We want to hear the stories they have to tell, but we don't actually want to hear the things they have to say because the things they have to say are generally stupid.
	They don't know anything about politics, so why in the world would we listen to them when it comes to politics?
	But again, Hollywood doesn't know that, so instead what Hollywood does is they think that we're watching because we want to hear their opinions on politics.
	So Jimmy Kimmel just couldn't help himself.
	He opened up with a bunch of jokes about Trump.
	Here were just a few of them.
	And it was joke after joke about Donald Trump and how terrible Trump was, and look how wonderful we are, and we love Meryl Streep, and Meryl Streep's the best, because she made fun of Donald Trump that one time at some ceremony, and yeah, we love her, and sure, she was in a really crappy movie, Florence Foster Jenkins, that nobody ever saw, but it doesn't matter, because Meryl Streep, guys, Meryl Streep.
	So, yeah, he does all of these jokes in a row about Donald Trump, and we're all supposed to sit there and be like, yeah, this is great, yeah!
	The real reaction is, can you guys get over yourselves, please?
	Really, this is the best that you can do?
	These are your best jokes about Donald Trump, calling him racist?
	And calling, presumably, the people who voted for him racist?
	That's a great way to alienate an audience that's already not watching any of your Best Picture nominees.
	Nothing that was nominated for Best Picture this year did well at the box office.
	I think the only exception, as far as a movie that did well at the box office, was Arrival.
	I'm not aware of any other movie that was nominated for Best Picture this year that did over $100 million in business.
	Did Arrival end up doing $100 million in business?
	If it did, it was real close.
	It was not a blockbuster blowout out of the ballpark.
	It was a good movie.
	I enjoyed it.
	But all of the movies that were nominated this year, again, were seen by pretty much the people in this particular room.
	And then it didn't stop there.
	The self-aggrandizement of Hollywood is just unending.
	Viola Davis won Best Supporting Actress for her role in Suicide Squad.
	No, no, no, sorry.
	It was, it was, no, not for Suicide Squad.
	It was, it was for her role in, uh, what was the name of that movie?
	Fences, Fences.
	Sorry.
	Sorry, I got that wrong.
	Um, but Viola Davis, who was, I thought she was fantastic in Suicide Squad.
	That's why I thought that she had to win.
	So was that guy who, like, shot fire from his fingers and everything.
	Anyway, Viola Davis, she gets up and she gives this speech.
	We're the only profession, the only one, that celebrates what it means to live a life?
	So I was complaining before this show started today that I'm kind of tired.
	You know the reason I'm kind of tired today?
	Because my wife has woken up the last several mornings at 4 o'clock in the morning to go into the hospital because she is a doctor and she's in her residency, which means she's getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning to help people who in some cases are terminally ill.
	Clearly the only profession that cares about living a life, that honors and celebrates living a life, is Hollywood.
	And it's so just, bleh, when Viola Davis says stuff like this, the fact is, the vast majority of people in the United States work jobs where they're helping each other live better lives.
	But the artists have to pat themselves on the back, and this is what I was saying at the very beginning, the artists in Hollywood have to make themselves feel important one of two ways, because otherwise they're just reading lines for a living and wearing funny costumes.
	So they have to make themselves feel important in one of two ways.
	One is, they make important stories.
	Right?
	We're going to make a story about a black gay youth living in Miami.
	Right?
	That's going to be the thing that makes us important.
	Or, alternatively, we have to talk about how important we are to everybody else.
	Now, I don't get on the air every morning and talk about how important my job is.
	I don't.
	Because it's either important to you or it's not important to you, but I don't have to preach how important what I do is to you, because you'll decide for yourself.
	And I think that's true for the vast majority of people.
	When you call a plumber, he doesn't show up to your house and go, you know what?
	It's really important I fix your toilet today.
	I'm the guy who stands between you and crap running over your floor.
	The plumber doesn't do that.
	He just goes and he fixes your stuff.
	But the artist community, because they understand that people sort of see them as frivolous, they feel the necessity to go out and talk about how special they are all the time.
	And this is not underestimating art.
	I love art.
	I love the movies.
	I love books.
	I love plays.
	I drew.
	I love the arts.
	I grew up in the arts.
	My dad was somebody in the arts.
	My mom is somebody in the arts.
	My sister is somebody in the arts.
	Two of my sisters are people in the arts.
	I love the arts.
	They're fantastic.
	You know, I write novels.
	I love the arts, but You know, art is wonderful, it's enriching, it can connect us to each other, but the utter arrogance, the true arrogance of saying the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life, I mean, that's really astounding.
	You know who else celebrates?
	Like, literally everyone does.
	You know who else celebrates what it means to live a life?
	Morticians, right?
	I mean, they actually put together the funeral arrangements where we remember people.
	There's also something that's really, it's really high-handed about saying that only the lives we choose to honor in Hollywood are the important ones, right?
	She said in this speech, She said, there's one place all the people with the greatest potential are gathered, the graveyard.
	People ask me all the time, what kind of stories do you want to tell, Viola?
	And I say, exhume those bodies, exhume those stories, the stories of the people who dream big and never saw those dreams to fruition.
	And this kind of stuff goes over big in Hollywood.
	Ooh, the dreams.
	Ooh, the dreams.
	But the reality is, the vast majority of people in the graveyard, their stories will never be told.
	But they are still remembered by their family.
	Their impact is still felt.
	Your life doesn't end when your life ends unless Viola Davis exhumes you and makes a story about you, you know, that's not even real, right?
	Unless a fictional story about a person who never existed.
	No, what actually makes your life important is the friends and family around you and the way you impact the world in a better way and the way that you do honorable things for friends and neighbors and make the world a better place.
	That's how you make the world a better place.
	There are a lot of people who are remembered who are really evil.
	That doesn't make them more important.
	It doesn't make them more special.
	Being remembered by people who actually matter is, I think, more important than Viola Davis remembering you.
	And the idea that Hollywood is what confers value on people is really kind of gross.
	I mean, another element of this, and some people liked it, some people hated it, I didn't like it, was Jimmy Kimmel did this routine where he ushered in a bunch of people off the Hollywood tour bus directly into the Oscars, and here's what it looked like.
	See, the whole point of this little shtick here is to demonstrate just how special Hollywood is.
	It's so special that you can bring people in off the street, and then you can show them just how magical Hollywood is.
	I mean, look at all these important people.
	And look at all these ne'er-do-well rubes, you know, just walking out.
	What an honor for them!
	What an honor for them!
	We brought in the peasantry off the street, and now the peasants get to hobnob with the hoi polloi.
	They get to be among the stars.
	See, what would have been great, honestly, and what would have been funnier, is if Kimmel had, before this, taken a bunch of the stars to visit people on their actual jobs.
	They make movies about these actual jobs.
	It would be really funny to take Chris Pine, for example, in Hell or High Water, and take him to an oil derrick, and show him the people working in oil derrick, right?
	Or it would be really funny to take Nicole Kidman and take her down to the local plumber's union and have her see what people are actually doing over there.
	Because that would have said, okay, look, we're Hollywood, and we know what we do is kind of frivolous, and it brings meaning to some people, but we also understand that what you do is really important.
	Instead, this whole event is all about how Hollywood is super-duper important to all of our lives.
	And look, it's fun.
	I enjoy the Oscars as much as the next guy, although I'll admit I did not watch a lot of it live last night.
	But at the same time, this sort of, this sort of I'm going to look down on you because we're from Hollywood and we're special, it manifests itself not just in terms of general attitude toward the people who live in the middle of the country.
	They're a bunch of rednecks and rubes.
	It also manifests itself in terms of politics, and we're going to talk more about that in just a second.
	But for that, you have to go over to dailywire.com right now and subscribe.
	You go over to dailywire.com, eight bucks a month will make you a subscriber to dailywire.com.
	You can see the rest of the show live and check it out over there.
	You can also get an annual subscription right now at dailywire.com.
	You get a free copy of a piece of entertainment that's actually conservative, The Arroyo.
	If you watched it on Friday, we live streamed the film so you could actually see it.
	The Arroyo is a fictional film set

▲