Ep. 661’s Regressive Progressivism dissects Hollywood’s 2019 Oscars, where Roma—a 3-hour "nothing" film—won Best Director for its anti-conservative messaging, while Green Book triumphed as a "standard" pick. Spike Lee’s divisive 1619 Project speech and Whoopi Goldberg’s canceled hosting fueled the critique of leftist art over substance, with Black Panther mocked for Eurocentric Africa and Get Out praised as the sole modern film. Michael Knowles joins to mock the Oscars’ political boredom, while the episode ties Hollywood’s identity politics—reparations, socialism—to outdated grievances like Kamala Harris’ race-based policies and Obama’s economic failures, arguing leftism "guts the arts" by forcing ideology over reality. The Jussie Smollett hoax’s backlash is framed as a rare moment of leftist self-awareness, but the core takeaway remains: art should reflect life, not partisan narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, I'm sure you were all excited by the Academy Awards, and neither was I. Who, oh who, you weren't asking yourself, is going to win this coveted piece of draws?
Will it be Black Klansman, or Black Panther, or Black Piano Player, or Gay Singer, or Lesbian Queen, or Evil Republican, or Latina Maid, or maybe even the white people in love?
And I wonder how they chose those movies out of all the movies that were made last year.
And how could you not lay aside the humdrum chores of your boring, ordinary life in order to tune in and watch all those beautiful, rhinestone-souled moral non-entities take time off from cheating on their spouses and abusing their personal assistants in order to come on stage in an orgy of self-congratulation and trash your values and insult your political choices?
What, after all, could be more fun than being scolded for bitterly clinging to your patriotism and religion when instead you could be as glamorous and beautiful as some coked-up fraud who can't understand why all the money and fame in the world has left her even more empty and miserable than she was when she slept with that toad of a producer to get her very first starring role.
And wasn't it inspiring to see such idols of the silver screen as what's his name and somebody sporting colored ribbons representing their commitment to never again allowing MAGA hat-wearing bigots like you just stand by and let powerful moguls rape starlets while everyone in Hollywood knew, or powerful directors like Roman Polanski rape little girls and then win Oscars anyway, or other powerful directors rape underage boys and then get nominated for Oscars.
What kind of Trump-supporting louts were you to let that happen?
And in the end, wasn't it great to see the award go to whatever movie it went to while I was playing Diablo III and not paying any attention?
Because this was Hollywood's biggest night, and so they can stick it where the sun don't shine.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky, life is tickety-boo.
Birds are winging, also singing, hunky-dunkity.
Ship-shaped dipsy-topsy, the world is it bitty-zing.
It's a wonderful day, hurrah, hooray!
It makes me want to sing.
Oh, hurrah, hooray!
Oh, hooray, hurrah.
Speaking of the Oscars, did anyone else besides me notice how every single movie nominated was about old stuff?
Green Book, The Winner, took place in 1962.
Black Klansman, which Spike Lee thought should be the winner for some reason, took place in the 1970s.
Bohemian Rhapsody, also the 70s into the 80s.
Likewise, Roma.
Black Panther is based on a comic book from the 1960s.
A Star is Born is a remake of a film from 1937.
The favorite is about the 18th century for crying out loud.
Only Vice, a hate-filled left-wing fantasy that reveals what Republicans are really like in the minds of a socialist and nowhere else, deals with anything contemporary at all, though it is a biopic about a guy born in the 40s.
But it's not just the sources of the film, it's the values and issues in the movies, because movies are made by progressives, no conservatives allowed, and if there's one thing progressives are, it's regressive.
Their socialism is a debunked relic of the 1930s.
Their intersectionalism extends the racist attitudes of the 1950s into the present, and their commitment to sexual license is a throwback to the 1920s, if not to downright primitive times.
It's kind of ironic that the only people speaking seriously about the future are conservatives.
But that's Hollywood, and that's America.
Debating Identity Politics00:15:21
And we'll talk more about that.
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So, you know, oh, oh, by the way, before I want to go on, I just want to take care of one piece of business here.
Last week, I was quoting, I had a video of a commentator, a commentator named Camille Foster, and he was talking about the Jussie Smollett incident, and he was talking about how the press had jumped the gun and how their value, they go with anything that fits in with their leftist values.
And he made a comment that I quoted that all Trump supporters are racist.
He very, very graciously pointed out to me on Twitter that he was in fact being sarcastic.
And I went back and looked at it, and he was right.
Camelli Foster was being sarcastic.
So I hit him on that, which I should not have done.
And I really regret it because everything else he was saying was incredibly intelligent.
And that obviously, when he said, oh, all Trump supporters are racist, he was kidding around.
So just in case anybody remembers that I said that, it was a mistake.
It was my mistake.
Okay, so I watched all the movies to get ready because we're doing the Daily Wire backstage tonight.
And we'll be talking about the Oscars and everything.
And Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring and Ben Shapiro and that other guy, wait a minute, Knowles.
And I will be there and we'll be talking about the culture in Hollywood and all the embarrassing hilarity of leftist millionaires celebrating themselves and melting down over Donald Trump.
And Daily Wire subscribers will get to ask questions.
So make sure to go to dailywire.com and subscribe for a lousy 10 bucks a month or 100 bucks for the year.
So I watched all the movies except for Roma.
Roma was so boring that I couldn't even get past the O in the title.
I would say, I'll watch Roma, and then I was asleep.
So I'd never watched Roma.
But, you know, all these movies, they have a lot of talent.
And in A Star is Born, one of the themes of A Star is Born is it's not enough to have talent.
You have to have something to say.
And none of the movies, none of the movies, with the exception of The Favorite, which I thought was a pretty decent film, none of them had anything to say that was new.
I mean, Green Book, it's a very likable film.
It's got two excellent performances in it.
This guy, Ali, is a terrific actor.
And of course, Viggo Martinson is a terrific actor.
None of this is a hit on the talent of these people.
I mean, so many of these, you know, to make it in Hollywood, you have to be talented, not just talented, but also lucky.
Green Book, and Green Book is a really, you know, enjoyable, watchable little movie.
It's not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination.
But the message is basically that we should be nice to black people and gay people.
I mean, is there anybody left?
Is there anybody left really that needs to hear this message?
I mean, it's, you know, it's touching, I guess, you know, but is there anybody left who really needs to hear in America, who is going to hear the message, who needs to hear the message that we can all get along and we shouldn't be racist?
You know, it's just kind of old.
Black Klansman, you know, has it's a cute, another cute little watchable film.
I enjoyed it.
It's not a bad film.
All the actors are great.
But in the end, he tells us that, oh, we're still in this problem, still this problem.
We still have the problem of the 60s and 70s because Donald Trump is the Ku Klux Klan.
I mean, come on.
I mean, give me a break.
Give me a break.
I mean, we can't accept that the Klan is basically gone, that the white supremacists are now way, way, way outsiders, that, you know, when they call a national meeting of white supremacists, 20 people show up.
I mean, is that really, you know, it's fine to tell old stories.
I'm not saying we shouldn't tell old stories, but they're all old stories, and all the values are old.
You know, Black Panther, I've said this before, I just found that, I mean, black Americans have made stunning contributions to the culture of America.
Part, you know, a huge chunk of American culture is about Europeans, European-based people coming to deal with African-based people as equals.
That's part of the story of America.
It's one of the beautiful things about America.
You know, from our Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, these are important movements in American society.
And some of our greatest men, Martin Luther King, certainly one of our greatest men, have come out of that movement.
But just in terms of our culture, in terms of humor and athletics and music, I mean, so many things that black people have contributed to.
I found Black Panther just sad that basically it imagines that Africa had European society and it got it because a big rock dropped out of space and gave them superpowers.
I mean, that's, first of all, a misunderstanding of how culture is created, the many varieties of things that go into culture, way, way, way beyond just race.
I mean, you know, I don't even know if race plays a part.
I guess it does.
I mean, I guess it gives a flavor to things.
But, you know, I mean, Africa, you know, had bad government governance.
It had all kinds of things that kept them from using their natural resources.
And maybe it's just the weather.
We don't know what causes culture to arise when it does.
But black people have nothing to be ashamed of, and they have nothing to say to themselves, oh, we should have had that culture.
I mean, it's kind of like Jews, you know, they always say think Yiddish, but dress British.
It's like, you don't have to dress British.
You don't have to dress like anything.
Just join the big parade of America, the multicolored parade of America, and have a good time.
I just think that Black Panther, I found really all of these pictures, I just found incredibly old-fashioned.
That's why the last movie I really liked was Get Out, because I felt like, oh yeah, this is a guy who understands that blacks have moved beyond the segregation stage, moved beyond the institutional racism stage, and now dealing with the same problems that everybody else has had, namely assimilation and what it costs.
That's what Get Out is about.
Get Out is about if you assimilate, they will steal your soul.
And there's some truth to that.
It's a fear.
It's a horror movie, so it's all blown out of proportion.
But there's some truth to it, and at least it's dealing with something modern.
It's dealing with something happening now.
The left cannot let go of old things because they think that that's where their power comes from.
And maybe they're right.
Maybe the only power they have is defending old stuff.
You know, there's this clip of Joy Reed interviewing Kamala Harris.
And Joy Reed, have I got that right?
Is it Joy Reed?
I think it is.
And she says, yeah.
And she says to her, you know, when black people take power, like Barack Obama, there's this great pressure on them to take a policy of a high tide lifts all ships.
I mean, this is kind of the conservative idea that if the economy is going well, everybody does well.
Of course, I don't do as well as, you know, Bill Gates does, but I don't care as long as I'm doing well.
Bill Gates can have whatever he wants and whatever he gets for what he does.
You know, it's not fair necessarily, but I don't care.
That's not my, my life is not built on envy.
My life is built on gratitude.
And so I'm grateful that I'm doing well, and I think that's the way people should be.
And she says, but really, says Joy Reed, shouldn't we pay attention to race?
Isn't race.
And Kamala Harris basically says, if you elect me president, I will be a racist.
Here's the cut clip.
Would it be difficult for you to advocate race-based policy, or would you feel that you have to do just rising tide?
Look, here's how I feel about this.
And I want to talk about the issue of identity politics, Joy.
I gave a speech about this at NetRoots last year.
So, you know, this term identity politics, people will use that term.
It's like people used to talk about the race car.
Right.
And they'll bring this term up when you talk about issues that are about race, about sexual orientation, about religion.
They'll bring it up when we're talking about civil rights issues as a way to marginalize the issue, as a way to frankly try to silence you or shut you up.
And we need to call that what it is, which is to try and divert away from a conversation that needs to happen in America.
Yeah, it needs to, we've never had the conversation about race in America.
I always love that.
What that means is we haven't agreed with her.
That's what that means.
Whenever you hear leftists say we need to have a conversation about race, what they mean is you need to sit still while we pound you on the head and try to make you buy our identity politics.
And this is a big Democrat, you know, a big factor in their playbook is to say, well, you hear the right attacking us, calling us identity politics.
The problem is that's what they're doing.
And she will not let go of this idea that there's some special magic in the government now that is keeping black people back instead of dealing with the problems of dysfunctional culture.
And that's what Barack Obama is talking about.
Now the left is attacking him.
And we'll talk about that in a minute.
We're also going to have Michael Knowles come on in a little while and talk.
I forced him to watch the Oscars just for my own personal glee.
But he did watch it.
He's going to talk about the Oscar program.
And every time people see Michael Knowles, they say to me, you know, why didn't you use ZipRecruiter when you were hiring?
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He's not here yet, right?
So I can keep doing this.
So Obama went to this thing in Oakland.
There's a thing called My Brother's Keeper, which is about mentoring young black men that came along after Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman.
And Obama went in and he said to some young black men, he said, if you are really confident about your financial situation, you are probably not going to be wearing an eight-pound chain around your neck because you know if I've got a bank account, I don't have to show you how much I got.
I feel good.
So he's saying, make money.
Don't brag about having money.
Don't go around wearing your dollar bill gold chain.
I mean, this is the Barack Obama after he doesn't have to defend his bad policies.
I mean, really, I really believe what happened with Obama is that he didn't know what he didn't know.
He had all these things that he had been taught, all these ideas that he thought were going to make the world a better place and the tide was going to recede and everything was going to go away.
Instead, it was a mess.
He couldn't get the economy going.
Even though the dead cat bounce alone from the crash in 2008 should have made it soar.
It didn't soar until Trump took office because Obama didn't know what he was doing, because his policies were wrong.
He blew up the Middle East.
We were almost out of there and he blew it up and let ISIS run wild and everything was going wrong.
So he reverted to the Democrat playbook.
He reverted to the Democrat playbook of identity politics.
Whenever there was some kind of trouble that involved a black guy hitting on the police, attacking the police, which really was sinful in that case, and now he's free of that, right?
So he's free to just tell people what he really thinks.
And he says to these kids, he says, you know, oftentimes racism, historically in this society, sends you a message that you are less than and weak.
And we, meaning black men, feel that we have to compensate by exaggerating certain stereotypical ways that men are supposed to act.
And that's a trap that we fall into that we have to pull out of.
Now, you've heard me say the same thing: that racism, bigotry creates the effect that it basically hates people into becoming the thing that they hate.
So Jews in the Middle Ages were not allowed to do anything except loan money because usury was off base to Christians.
And so then you say, oh, well, the Jews have all the money.
They're very good with money.
You know, it's money.
All they care about is money.
You know, you create the person that you hate.
You turn him.
What is the line in Merchant of Venice?
He said, you call me a dog, now beware my fangs.
And that's what happens.
It transforms people.
So the left goes after Obama.
And where do we find the left?
Of course, we find it at the New York Times, a former newspaper on Knucklehead Row.
So we get from Direka Purnell, a Harvard-trained lawyer and a black person.
Why does Obama scold black boys?
The former president still can't see the beautiful and complex range of black culture.
So some guy with his shirt open wearing gold chains about how rich he is.
This is the beautiful, complex black culture, really.
He says, his comments disappointed me because the comments I was just reading, his comments disappointed me because they're part of problematic practices like calling out black children for having ghetto names or wearing Air Jordans.
Such remarks by Mr. Obama reflect his administration's failure and to an extent that of my brother's keeper to tackle the systemic inequality that shapes black people's lives in America.
Why didn't you stick with the black racial program and why did you just try and have there be a high tide that lifts all boats?
Yet Michelle's husband, she goes on, as he introduced himself at the town hall, uses my brother's keeper to change life outcomes for boys of colors, but its solution to financial insecurity and the racist violence that led to Trayvon's murder, which is not literally not true, are the same.
Community mentorship, that's their solution.
This pales in comparison to reparations or any major social or legislative intervention that justice requires.
Now, reparations, the idea that people who did nothing to you should pay you back for things that didn't happen to you, is it's like, you know, here in Los Angeles, we have the tar pits.
They're tar pits, and prehistoric beasts like mastodons fell into the tar pits, couldn't get out, were sucked down, and now they're fossils.
Bernie Sanders on Reparations00:08:56
That's what this is.
Reparations, the idea of white privilege, which is simply the idea of envy.
It's not about what I have, what I should be grateful for.
It's about what that guy has that he shouldn't have.
You know, reparations, it's the idea that the past never goes away, that I have to be paid back for the past, even though it didn't happen to me, that I have to punish people who did that, even though the only relationship between them and the people who did it is the color of their skin, so it's racist.
It's this old idea, and it's a tar pit.
It is keeping people.
Look, believe me, believe me, I am not preaching to black people on how to be black.
I'm preaching to Americans on how to be American, you know, because that is the thing.
The movie Get Out gets it right.
The time has come when you have to deal with the problems of assimilation, which all of us have to deal with.
And there are true problems and there are true costs, but they do not want to let it go.
They will not let it go.
And I'm not just talking about race.
I'm talking about all of the left's grievances, all the things that they feel happened in the past.
Instead of celebrating where they are now, they've got to hold on.
They've got to hold on because it makes them important.
It makes them revolutionaries and rebels and brave people.
And they can especially be brave people.
They can especially be brave people because there's no cost because the problem is gone.
Nobody's going to set a dog on a person for saying black people should be treated fairly.
Those days are done.
Those days are done.
And thank God.
Thank God they're done.
And so it's heroism without price.
It's unreal heroism.
It's like the people, the right-wing people, who write to me and say, here's my ideas.
Could you say it on your show?
Because I don't want to pay the penalty.
And I think, yeah, I don't want to pay the penalty either.
But we pay penalties for saying things.
I'm not getting dogs sent after me.
I mean, the penalties I pay are minor career things that I just have to deal with, which is fine.
But there is no telling the truth without the price and without paying a price.
And there is no speaking up without paying a price.
And the price for racism in this country has been paid.
It's been paid by people who came before you.
It's your turn to celebrate and contribute and assimilate insofar as you can.
They're doing it to Michelle Obama, too.
Same thing, Knucklehead Row.
Why do black people still feel we have to retain white empathy at the expense of being truly empathetic to ourselves?
It's not white empathy, it's joining in the society.
And again, it's not just racism, it's socialism too.
You know, back in the 1930s, after the crash, socialism, I can understand how people got sucked into socialism.
They were told, first of all, that the crash was caused by unfettered capitalism.
That wasn't true.
It was caused by the government's poor handling of the monetary system.
That's what it was really caused by.
It was not caused by just unfettered rich people, but it's easy to hate the rich when things go wrong.
When you're poor, it's easy to hate the rich.
But they cling to it.
And these ideas, Bernie Sanders is like a throwback.
The guy reminds me of some 1930s radical.
In 1988, I mean, here's an amazing thing.
In 1988, Bernie Sanders went to the USSR and came back to tell people how great it is.
Now, just remember, think of that date for a minute, 1988.
Here he is.
I think it's also fair to point out that when we were in Moscow, for example, I think most of the people here also were extremely impressed by their public transportation system.
The stations themselves were absolutely beautiful, including many works of art, chandeliers that were beautiful.
It was a very, very effective system.
Also, I was impressed by the youth programs that they have, their palaces of culture for the young people, a whole variety of programs for young people, and cultural programs which go far beyond what we do in this country.
We went to a theater in Yaroslav, which was absolutely beautiful, had three separate stages where cultural programs are put on by professional actors and actresses, including a puppeteer area.
And the cost, the highest price of the ticket that you can get was the equivalent of $1.50.
You know, this is 1988.
This is three years before the Soviet Union collapses in poverty and disarray.
Mike Durant tweeted that out.
My pal Mike Durant from the think tank Hoover Institute, I think.
He tweeted out saying he was there in 1988 and the place was falling apart.
But Sanders is clinging to this.
You know, he talks about Cuba and how wonderful Castro is.
Now it's the Cubans who are running Venezuela now.
When you look at what's happening in Venezuela, Maduro is the front man, but the thugs who are keeping him in power and the thugs who helped him get to power and secure power are all from Havana.
They are all the Cubans.
It's Castro, the Castro regime spreading the communism from Cuba.
And you see what it's done.
You see that the people are hungry.
They're starving.
They're rioting.
Maduro is shooting at them.
Bernie Sanders still, still cannot call this guy a tyrant.
He still will not call him a tyrant.
Still will not support Juan Guado, the also leftist opposition candidate who has the approval of the government who Trump is supporting.
He's still back there.
He's still in those 1930s.
It doesn't matter.
Russia fell.
He came back and said, oh, the Soviet Union is great.
Three years later, it collapsed.
You know, when the Soviet Union collapsed, I thought, gee, Reagan was right.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I should change my mind.
And I began to change my mind.
Not Bernie, not Bernie, and not the left.
And now they're sitting around, they're cranking because Trump is calling them a socialist.
And they say, oh, that's the old Republican thing.
They're calling us socialists.
Well, guess what?
That's what they are.
There is a wonderful video of the Sunrise Movement, which is this radical environmental movement trying to intimidate politicians into accepting the Green New Deal, which is just socialism.
It's government moving into corporations, telling us all how we have to live.
And they went into Diane Feinstein, who's what, like 80 at this point, who's got enough trouble.
They send in children, and the children demand the Green New Deal.
And Diane Feinstein told him to pounce down.
Listen.
We are trying to ask you to vote yes on the Green New Deal.
Please.
Okay, I'll tell you what.
We have our own Green New Deal.
Some scientists have said that we have 12 years to turn this around.
Well, it's not going to get turned around in 10 years.
What we can do.
Senator, it just doesn't get turned around in 10 years.
You're looking at the faces of the people who are going to be living with these.
The government is supposed to be for the people and by the people.
And all of that.
You know what's interesting about this group is I've been doing this for 30 years.
I know what I'm doing.
You come in here and you say it has to be my way or the highway.
I don't respond to that.
I've gotten elected.
I just ran.
I was elected by almost a million vote plurality.
And I know what I'm doing.
So, you know, maybe people should listen a little bit.
So that didn't work, even on Diane Feinstein, a fairly left-wing senator.
So they sent in another kid.
You give me a dollar to put in my bag.
I'll give you a dollar to put in your bag if you'll sing me a song.
Give me the damn bag.
You're more than five.
Go on, get out of here.
You wouldn't even sing for the buck.
I mean, come on.
So that didn't work.
So finally, they sent in the most whiny, most ill-educated, most empty-headed child they could find.
It was cut number five.
Our planet is going to fake disaster if we don't turn this ship around.
And so it's basically like there's scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult.
And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question.
You know, should is it okay to still have children?
And I mean, not just financially, because people are graduating with $20,000, $30,000, $100,000 worth of student loan cat, and so they can't even afford to have kids in a house, but also just this basic moral question: like, what do we do?
And even if you don't have kids, there are still children here in the world, and we have a moral obligation to them to leave a better world for them.
And this idea that if we just, you know, I've been working on this for X amount of years, it's like not good enough.
You know, so you shouldn't have children, you know, and we really, if we're all going to die unless we less we go socialist.
I mean, this is, it's an amazing, amazing thing that because she doesn't know anything, because she knows no history, because she knows no economics, because she knows nothing about American values or the Constitution, she is stuck.
She is stuck back there with Bernie Sanders, her mentor and friend.
She is stuck with him back in the 1930s.
Greatest Moment Unlikely00:11:27
The only people talking about going forward are conservatives, not all of them, but some of them.
And they're talking about it because they have better values.
I mean, these are the values of envy, the values of like relying on others to change things.
This is what always gets me about things like reparations.
It's like you're not supposed to take yourself in hand and do your best.
You're supposed to wait for white people to help you.
That's basically what they want.
I mean, those are bad values.
Materialism, measuring your life by how much money you've got.
Those are bad values.
And certainly racism, which is intersectionalism, is just racism with a smiley face.
Those are all bad values.
I mean, those are things we've moved beyond, all of us except the left.
And that's why all the movies are about old things because they're stuck in that world where some of the stuff kind of made sense or seemed to make sense before it was all debunked.
So speaking of the movies, we're going to speak to Monsieur Michael Knowles.
We now call him that because I don't know why do we call him, I just made that up.
I'm sorry.
But he'll be right with us, but we got to say goodbye to YouTube and Facebook.
Come to dailywire.com and subscribe, and then you can be with us backstage and ask questions as we talk about the culture and the Oscars.
All right, we are back.
Michael Knowles, good to see you.
You cruel man.
You cruel man.
Even I felt bad.
Even I felt bad.
I was, you know, I've been gotten addicted to this video game, Diablo 3, which is great because I can play it with people.
This is the first time I've ever played online.
Really?
Yeah, I play with Spencer, I play with my kids, and all this stuff.
So, you know, it's great.
But I was playing it and I was thinking, Mills is watching the Oscars.
You're there just eating pizza, playing your videos.
You're playing with Scott's TV.
So how was it?
Was it that bad?
You know, I got to tell you something.
It was the most boring Oscars maybe of my lifetime.
Really?
Which is sort of a good thing.
No news is good news for the Oscars, I guess.
There was some rumor that they were going to have Whoopi Goldberg be a surprise host.
She had already hosted.
It's so exciting with that.
Whoopi!
Whoopi.
Yeah, they were going to, I think they were going to dig up Bob Hope and dry down.
So that was the rumor.
They didn't do it.
There was no host.
They had, you know, Tina Faye and like all the other Tina Fays came out and did some jokes at the top.
There really was no host.
They were all anti-Trump jokes.
Yeah, I mean, it was all typical leftist nonsense, but there just weren't that many big moments.
The winner for Best Director was a bit of a surprise to those of us who were hoping that the Academy still had integrity.
It went to Alfonso Quaron for Roma.
The Roma.
Which, by the way, I'm so much of a masochist.
I then watched Roma.
Did you really?
I did.
I woke up very early this morning.
I watched the whole movie.
You're kidding me.
I did.
And that movie is about 18 hours long.
So I actually woke up last night.
That movie, because I didn't want to be unfair to it.
It looked terrible.
The reviews, the reviewers that I trust said it was terrible.
It is, it's not just terrible.
They say that nostalgia is history after a few drinks.
I cannot even imagine how many drinks Quaron had to produce this self-indulgent, pretentious tripe.
It was one of, it's in the top 30 worst movies I've ever seen.
Oh, no, you know.
Yes.
I mean, my wife turned it off.
And so you got to think like that's that's bad.
That's pretty bad.
It's the only one of the movies I couldn't bring myself to watch.
just looked at it and I thought, even the trailer is boring me, you know?
It's like...
I mean, it was just a play.
It was a very cynical political play on intersectional politics to see how far not a movie could get in the academy.
I mean, it's not a movie.
It's sort of a home movie with the pretensions of black and white.
It's supposed to look like one of these epic movies of the 60s, like Fellini or something like that.
It's about nothing.
It's about some made in Mexico.
You know, it does have an effect that you, you know, there's still, there's still some kind of prestige going on with an Oscar.
Even like the old cranks on the right, like me, who sit around, ah, the Oscars, they don't care about the Oscars.
Even they say, oh, yeah, that film won an Oscar, right?
And so if you know that if you make a film attacking Dick Cheney or attacking the left, telling us that Donald Trump is a Ku Klux Klansman, which is absurd, you know that you can get an ominous.
Well, this is the issue.
And really, funny, you mentioned the black Klansman.
The only semi-outrageous moment of the night came when Spike Lee, an idiot, gave his acceptance speech for, I think it was best adapted screenplay.
Here's just a clip of it.
Okay.
The month February, which also happens to be the shortest month of the year, which also happens to be Black Christian Month, the year 2019, the year 1619.
History, her story, 1619, 2019, 400 years.
400 years.
Our ass who was stolen from Mother Africa and brought to Jamestown Virginia enslaved.
Our ass has worked the land from Kansas in the morning to Kansas at night.
My grandmother, Zimmy Sheldon Reeth, who lived to be 100 years young, who was a Spelmer College graduate, even though her mother was a slave.
My grandma, who saved 50 years of Social Security checks with her first grandchild, she called me Spikey Pooh.
She put me through Morehouse College and NYU grad film.
NYU.
Before the world tonight, I give praise to our ancestors who helped built this country and was today along with the genocide of his native people.
Huh?
What happened?
I mean, talk about getting it from the sense that I could make that speech.
Talk about getting it exactly backwards.
And this is the problem with the Oscars.
This is the greatest moment.
This should be the greatest moment of this guy's career.
He doesn't deserve an Oscar.
He's not a very good director.
He doesn't make very good films.
He doesn't make very good films.
And they give it to him.
They give Spike the participation trophy.
It should be the greatest moment of his night.
And he complains about everything.
He complains about the number of days in the month of February.
He complains about anything he can.
This is where they get it exactly flipped.
And you know, the other thing about it is he was very bitter that he didn't win best movie.
There were all these things about him storming around.
He stormed around.
He said, every time somebody drives somebody, I lose.
That was because he lost driving Miss Daisy.
But, you know, a mature artist knows that awards don't mean anything.
I've won awards, and I love them because you can always say, oh, I won an award, and people are impressed.
But they don't mean your stuff is good.
They do not mean your stuff is good.
The only time I've ever agreed with Woody Allen is that he never would show up.
He never say, I'm not going.
He would just say, that's the day I have my band plays.
And so he plays the clarinet.
And he would go off.
And I always thought, like, there's a guy who actually knows about art.
He understands.
Because, sure, it's fun to go if I were invited, which is somehow Gaznell didn't get invited.
I don't know what that was.
That's so strange.
That's another thing.
Yeah, I got it.
Just overlooked somehow.
But, you know, I would go because I like the fun of it and all this stuff.
But I would never think to myself, oh, they cut me because now, and now my work is less or it would have been more.
You know, it's like, screw them.
That's right.
And I will say, by the way, on the Spike Temper tantrum where he pulled a Kanye.
He was trying to steal this great moment from a fellow artist.
It actually does, I hate to leave us on a moment of hope for the Oscars, but the fact that there weren't many blow-ups, the fact that no host probably was better, and for the best picture, it went to Green Book, which is a standard Oscar-winning movie.
It's kind of a likable film.
It's kind of a likable film.
It does show that the center hasn't totally dissipated.
There is a little tiny something that is holding about the Oscars.
And the rest of the awards were a little weak.
A best actor going to the guy from Bohemian Rhapsody, Rami Malik.
He did a great job.
He did a very good job.
It's a whatever movie.
It's a weak year for movies.
Olivia Coleman getting it for the favorite.
She is a terrific actress.
She's a terrific actress.
It was a great performance.
She let herself look terrible because she's actually kind of an attractive lady.
Right.
And if they could take a year of basically terrible movies and, you know, come out with some good performances, have a basically fine Oscars.
Yeah.
A little boring no news is good news.
That might be a guide to the future for the film industry.
And if they can try to even minimize now the spikely explosions and the Vice nominations.
Luckily, Vice didn't really win very much.
It only won hair and makeup.
Which probably deserves.
Pretty good.
You know, there's just a little bit of hope.
I'd be curious to see what happens in a year with good movies, but I'm not sure that I can look forward to that anytime soon.
You know, I was shocked at how bad they were.
And again, it's not the talent.
I mean, like, last night I watched the last one that I was going to watch, which was A Star Is Born.
And Bradley Cooper has now legitimately become, he's replaced Denzel Washington as the best actor who's also a movie star.
You know, I mean, Denzel is still the greatest, but he's older now.
He's not going to be a leading man.
Bradley Cooper is a leading man who can really, he was really spectacular.
He's quite a good actor.
He really is, but you're watching the movie and it's like it's nothing new.
It's like the Judy Garland one was better.
And I feel bad because movies are fun, you know, but I really do believe it represents a loss of values, you know, like that they don't know, they can't make a good movie because they don't have the values that underlie good movies, you know?
You know, the Roma, the favorite for all of this, wins Best Foreign Film, all of these awards.
Roma's about nothing.
It's a film about nothing, and it's just self-indulgence, basically.
And that loss of values, that loss of a sense of purpose, that loss of a sense of narrative, and that total self-indulgence, which is the Oscars in 2018, 2019, and probably 2020, that's the problem.
Roma is the problem.
It embodies the problem.
But I don't see with that total loss of a compass how Hollywood can come back.
You know, I don't either.
And it's funny because you watch Netflix and there are all these, like, I watched that show, You, which was a thriller.
Not a great, you know, it's not the greatest show on Earth, but at least it was about the modern day.
At least it was about issues that are plaguing young people now.
I don't feel like I'm watching, I feel like I'm watching a bunch of people my age, which is not true.
A lot of the people making the films are younger than me, but I feel like I've seen these movies already.
We've dealt with these problems.
I live this stuff.
Show me the new world.
Show me the world as it is today, which is what I think the arts should be about to some degree.
And it's not like you can't make historical films.
I thought the most contemporary film was the favorite.
Right, it wasn't.
You know, because it dealt with a world in which men had been kind of excised, so there were no men in it.
And it dealt with the questions of power because there are two power-hungry women, one of whom actually loves her country, and the other one of whom doesn't.
And it's a difference about how you use power and what you use it for, and the patriotism of one and the kind of just self-aggrandizement.
And in that picture, there's the only great movie scene of the year, which is that dance movie.
The dancing scene.
It's an amazing scene.
The dancing scene is a brilliant scene.
It's a brilliant scene, and it says something.
It basically says the world you are watching now, this 18th century world, is today.
Yes.
Because what they do is they start with an 18th century dance and it morphs into a modern breakdance, which is hilarious.
At me in stitches, first of all.
And second of all, actually says something important.
So what are you talking about in your show?
Today we'll be talking about how despite a year of flops at the movies and in politics, somehow they keep giving awards to the narrative, but the people aren't buying it.
Dance Scene Says Something00:04:40
The audience isn't buying it.
It's true from Roma all the way to Andy McCabe.
And we'll see every one of those narratives butt up against reality.
It's really, it really is true.
Reality has a voice.
As I've always said, reality gets a vote.
All right, now we'll see you later on Daily Wire Backstage.
That's right.
I'll see you for Scotch or seven or ten and a couple of seconds.
And you get to wear a tuxedo, which even I get to wear a tuxedo.
So you look better in a tuxedo.
Stop it.
Come on, you're going to make me blush.
Get out of here.
So, you know, speaking of all this as a final reflection, one of the things that you've noticed is that I think leftism guts the arts.
It guts the arts because it will not let the arts be the arts.
The arts speak for themselves.
The arts speak about life, and life basically dictates what the arts say.
When you have an ideology and you stuff the ideology into the arts, the art dies.
It simply cannot do what it wants to do.
It's like putting a 10-ton rider on a horse and saying, Giddy app, it won't go because it's carrying this ideology, and all art wants to carry is life.
All art wants to carry is reality.
Leftism also destroys humor.
And one of the things that really got me over the weekend was because this Jussie Smollett thing was such a disaster for the left, even the left started to make fun of it.
And suddenly there was humor on the left again, which was like a welcome.
I was happy to see it.
It wasn't all on the left.
My favorite was Charles Barkley, who's not really on the left.
He's kind of just a loudmouth and he says whatever he wants to say.
But he was on what is the show, the halftime, TNT halftime report, and he's on with Shaq and he starts going off on Jussie Smollett.
And they try to cut away from him, and the poor white guy is trying to get out of it.
And Shaq just loses it.
It was a great moment.
What you would say has no chance of happening.
Two black guys beat the black guy up and have a black guy.
What kind of hats are you?
I think that's probably, I think that's probably it.
Okay.
You pay him with cash.
You pay him with cash.
You cash right, write him a check, Chuck.
Never break.
Hey, man, I say America.
How?
America.
Let me just tell you something.
What's that?
Do not commit crimes with checks.
Come on, man.
You cannot, if you're going to break the law, do not write a check.
Because you're writing a check that what?
Don't hide care cash.
Yo, man, you cannot cash up.
Hey, get cash, man.
I never used an ATM.
Now, you can only, I heard you can only get $200 out of it.
Oh, stop, literally.
You're going to have to make a lot of stuff to the ATMs, Jesse.
You wasted all that damn time and money.
You know what you should have done?
What's that?
Just went up in Liam Neeson's neighborhood.
That's a great line.
What he should have done is go to Liam Neeson's neighborhood and he would have beaten him up for free.
Then the Daily Show actually did Jesse Smollett the movie.
I need to find a MAGA Trump supporter and get him to beat me up in the streets.
And then I'll make more money.
But Jusie, where would you find Trump supporters willing to participate in this risky scheme?
I'm looking at him right now.
I'm talking about you guys.
And so the plot was hatched.
I have a hat and a noose so that everyone knows I am a racist.
Good.
Good job.
Good job.
And I brought the bleach.
Bleach?
Why?
I am so racist that I want to turn black people white.
Critics are calling it the performance of the year.
I love eating sandwiches at 2 a.m.
Hey, aren't you that actor that is underpaid on the show Empire, who is very famous and gay?
Yes, I am.
Ah! Ah! Ah!
Ah!
Ah!
Oh, see that rear.
This is MAGA country!
Ah!
Jesse's lie.
The only thing they got wrong is he drops the sandwich.
In real life, he never let go of the sandwich.
And people said, why didn't he let go of the sandwich?
I thought this is a subway.
Those things are good.
You don't just drop a subway sandwich while you're faking a crime.
But you know, it was just, it was heartening.
It was heartening to see the left laugh at itself a little bit.
Left Laughing At Itself00:01:55
A, because if you're not laughing at yourself, you're not laughing.
I mean, that's the first thing.
If you're not laughing at yourself, you're not really laughing.
You're just punching at people.
And B, because it's, you know, the past is over.
The past is past.
It really, you know, as I wrote once in a novel, somebody said, if the past isn't past, what is?
The past is past.
And when they start to see how silly it is to be stuck in this stuff, when they start to laugh at themselves a little bit, maybe we can start talking again because they've set up this narrative where, oh, they care about the poor and we don't care about the poor.
Oh, they care about black people.
That's not what the argument is.
The argument is about the uses of government.
The argument is about who should take care of the poor.
The argument is about how you get rid of racism or at least mitigate racism and what kind of racism you can mitigate.
Those are the conversations we could be having if only, if only they would move into the future and stop trying to reimpose these ideas that have been debunked since 1932.
All right, that's it for me, but I will be back on Daily Wire Backstage, and I'll be back tomorrow.
I'm Andrew Clavin.
This is The Andrew Klavan Show.
The Andrew Clavin Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring, senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
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Edited by Adam Sajovitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Cormina.
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The Andrew Clavin Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
I'm Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles Show.
In a year defined by flops, from Roma to Jussie Smollett, from Vice to Russian Collusion, the Academy still gives out its top prize to the leftist narrative.