Worst. Oscars. Ever.

Have you seen more than one of the movies nominated for best picture this year at the Oscars? The answer is probably not. While two of the nominees actually found sizable audiences (Dunkirk and Get Out), the rest of the field consists of small movies the general public doesn’t care about. Coupled with what many Americans expect to be a 3-hour left-wing political seminar, the broadcast of the 90th annual Academy Awards this Sunday is shaping up to be a Spinal Tap concert-level disaster.

If you look past Dunkirk’s $188 million box office and Get Out, with a $176 million take (against only a $4.5 million production budget), none of the nominated films excited people this year. The next highest-grossing movie was The Post with $78 million. While nothing to sniff at, it’s production budget was $50 million. Add in the cost of marketing and you’re not exactly rolling in the profits there. And that’s a movie starring two of the biggest names in Hollywood (Hanks and Streep) being directed by the biggest (Spielberg). People just don’t care.

The rest of the nominees found small audiences, some made a profit, but none caught fire.

The closest thing to a sleeper hit was Get Out, which is, at best, a guilty pleasure B-movie only getting the attention it has enjoyed because of the racial politics associated with it. It’s fine entertainment, but had it not had liberal-imposed “deeper meaning” and the praise that accompanies it, it would have faded quickly.

Get Out wasn’t even thought of as Oscar-bait when it was released, just a small summer movie. Oscar contenders, or movies studios think can be, aren’t released until the end of the year. But the overwhelming media hype surrounding the movie led to an Oscar campaign for a movie already on cable. That doesn’t happen very often.

Were Get Out released during the Obama administration it likely would have been forgotten. But Donald Trump is president, and that fact has set liberal Hollywood on edge. Coupled with so many in the business being exposed as sexual predators, and you have an entertainment industry that is reeling and embracing liberalism even harder this year.

Aside from, Dunkirk, and Get Out, other nominees are forgettable and unrelatable to most people. I love movies and I have no desire to see any of them, only having seen Get Out because it was TV.

The Post: A movie lionizing the media in a time when the media is as popular as toenail fungus. Hollywood loves movies about the media, so does the media. Audiences…not so much.

The Shape of Water: A love story between a woman and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I have no idea if it is, but it sure seems like it and I also don’t care.

Darkest Hour: Winston Churchill during the start of World War II. I’d watch it, but I don’t feel compelled to see it in theaters. I’ve heard good things, but I feel like I’ve seen this already.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri: A lady is mad at a racist cop for not solving her kid’s murder, or something. I don’t know, and I don’t care. Seems like a lifetime movie without the unintentional humor.

Lady Bird: When I first heard about it I assumed it was a bio-pic about LBJ’s wife. It’s not. Beyond that, I can only figure out that it’s about a quirky girl not getting along with her mom. I like movies that director Greta Gerwig has starred in, but have no desire to see this.

Phantom Thread: Daniel Day-Lewis is probably the best actor alive today, but a movie that seems like it’s about a creepy tailor is not high on my list for ways to spend two hours.

Call Me By Your Name: Watching an adult man seduce a 17-year-old boy is typical Oscar-bait but a bit weird in the “me too” era. Hollywood can’t help itself. Audiences sure did, it only took in $15 million at the box office. Maybe Kevin Spacey can present it, or sue for plagiarism from his life story. Either way, I’m with the rest of the country in having zero interest in it.

Audiences didn’t want to see the movies nominated, so there’s little chance they’ll tune in to see if movies they didn’t want to watch win awards they don’t care about.

Those who do tune in can expect host Jimmy Kimmell to lecture them about how awful the country is. There will be Trump jokes, there will be anti-Republican and anti-Second Amendment speeches. Don’t be surprised if an Obama or CNN-approved Parkland shooting survivor shows up on stage at some point, or at least gets a shout-out.

The entertainment industry exists because people want to be entertained, to escape from reality for a little while. But Hollywood can’t do that anymore, at least when it comes time to reward itself. They act as though they’re important; they believe it because their publicists tell them they are. The American people told them last year they aren’t, box office numbers hit a 25-year low in 2017.

Hollywood won’t learn the lessons of 2017. They’re making a movie about Wendy Davis, the liberal Democrat who became a liberal celebrity by filibustering an abortion law in Texas, then let the media attention go to her head and suffered a humiliating defeat in a bid for governor, so clearly Hollywood doesn’t care either.

So which movie will win best picture? Who cares? The biggest winners of the night will not be the rich celebrities who collect the $100,000-plus “swag bags” the pampered class is getting at the event (though that’d be nice), it’s the people who don’t watch any of it.

I hear Meryl Streep is bummed out b/c will not be doing her devout reading of “The Hollywood Creed”-—what all Hollywood really believes. (hat tip Michael Kelly)

Hollywood believes President Bill Clinton. And has always believed him. Hollywood believed it when Clinton said he had never been drafted in the Vietnam War and believed him later when Clinton said he had merely “forgotten to mention” that he had been drafted in the Vietnam War.

Hollywood believed him when Clinton he said he hadn’t had sex with Gennifer Flowers and believed him later, when Clinton reportedly said he did bed her down.

Hollywood believes the president did not rent out the Lincoln Bedroom to celebrities, did not sell access to himself and the vice president to hundreds of well-heeled special pleaders and did not supervise the largest, most systematic money-laundering operation in campaign finance history, collecting more than $ 3 million in illegal and improper donations.

Hollywood believes that Charlie Trie and James Riady were motivated by nothing but patriotism for their adopted country.

Hollywood believed President Clinton when he conceded that his administration mistakenly obtained the FBI files of more than 300 people, including many top Republicans and believes it was the result of a “completely honest bureaucratic snafu” involving security clearances.

Hollywood believed Clinton’s chief of staff, Leon Panetta, when he told reporters that “obviously a mistake was made” and apologized to the people whose FBI files wound up at the White House. Hollywood believed Clinton when he said “I completely support” what my COS Panetta said about the affair.

Hollywood believed Vice President Gore when he said that he had made dunning calls to political contributors “on a few occasions” from his White House office, and believed him when he said that, actually, “a few” meant 46.

Hollywood devoutly believes in no controlling legal authority....but not for Nixon or Trump.

Hollywood believed Bruce Babbitt when he said that the $286,000 contributed to the DNC by Indian tribes opposed to granting a casino license to rival tribes had nothing to do with his denial of the license. Hollywood believed the secretary when he said that he had not been instructed in this matter by then-White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes.

Hollywood believed him when he said later that he had told lobbyist and friend Paul Eckstein that Ickes had told him to move on the casino decision, but that he had been lying to Eckstein.

Hollywood agreed with the secretary that it is an outrage that anyone would question his integrity.

Hollywood firmly believes in the “Clinton Standard” of adherence to the nation’s campaign finance and bribery laws, enunciated by the president on March 7, 1997: “I don’t believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I had changed government policy solely because of a contribution.”

All of Hollywood’s accomplished wordsmiths noted with approval the use of the word “evidence” and also the use of the word “solely.” Hollywood believes, as Clinton does, that it is proper to change government policy to address the concerns of people who have given the president money, as long as nobody can find evidence of this being the “sole” reason.

Hollywood believes president Clinton lived up to his promise to preside over the most ethical administration in American history that indicted former agriculture secretary Mike Espy did not accept $35,000 in illegal favors from Tyson Foods and other regulated businesses.

Hollywood believes that indicted former housing secretary Henry Cisneros did not lie to the FBI and tell others to lie to cover up $250,000 in blackmail payments to his former mistress.

Hollywood believes that convicted former associate attorney general Webster Hubbell was not involved in the obstruction of justice when the president’s minions arranged for Hubbell to receive $ 400,000 in sweetheart consulting deals at a time when he was reneging on his promise to cooperate with Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater investigation.

Hollywood believes, as Harvey Weinstein does, that Paula Jones is a cheap tramp who was asking for it, that Kathleen Willey is a cheap tramp who was asking for it, and that Monica Lewinsky is a cheap tramp who was asking for it.

Hollywood firmly believes Monica Lewinsky was “just fantasizing” in her 20 hours of taped conversation in which she reportedly detailed her sexual relationship with the president and begged Linda Tripp to join her in lying about the relationship and that any gifts, correspondence, telephone calls and the 37 post-employment White House visits that may have passed between Lewinsky and the president are evidence only of a platonic relationship.

Hollywood believes, as all casting directors do, that such innocent intimate friendships are quite common between middle-aged married men and young single women, and also between presidents of the United States and White House interns.

Hollywood sees nothing suspicious in the report that the
president’s intimate pal, Vernon Jordan, arranged a $40,000-per-year job for Lewinsky shortly after she signed but before she filed an affidavit saying she had not had sex with the president.

Nor did insightful Hollywood with its finger on the pulse of America read anything significant into the fact that the ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, visited Lewinsky at the Watergate to offer her a job.

Hollywood producers, directors, authors and screenwriters believe the instructions Lewinsky gave Linda Tripp informing her on how to properly perjure herself in the Willey matter simply wrote themselves.

Hollywood believes, as does Hillary, that The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, PBS and NPR are all part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to malign the saintly Clintons.

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