The 87th Oscars ceremony supplied much food for thought—even if it isn’t the food that the Academy and the Oscar recipients had in mind.
This year’s ceremony has received much coverage for its salient displays of “political activism.” Indeed, the media is not wide of the mark on this score. Upon receiving their awards, Julianne Moore used the occasion to advocate on behalf of those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease; Patricia Arquette demanded “equal pay” for women, a clarion call that brought several of those in attendance, including, most notably, the distinguished Meryl Streep, to their feet; John Legend, alluding to their astronomical rates of incarceration, suggested that things for blacks in America haven’t changed all that much over the last 150 years or so, as more blacks are (allegedly) under “correctional control” today than lived under the control of the slave master in the past; and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu made a plea for immigration reform of a type that would insure that Mexican immigrants are treated with “dignity.”
Moral messaging on behalf of Hollywood actors and film makers is nothing new. However, while their fans in the media were struck by what Hollywood had to say about its pet causes, I was struck—though not at all surprised—by what it did not say.
First of all, while only the cold-hearted can fail to be moved by those afflicted with the ravages of Alzheimer’s, this is hardly a neglected disease: Researchers labor as tirelessly in search of a cure for this as they labor searching for cures to all sorts of other illnesses. Yet at least Alzheimer’s has real victims. The same can’t be said for “the pay gap,” “the prison-industrial-complex,” and American immigration policy. To put it more precisely, women, blacks, and illegal Mexican immigrants are not victims—at least not when it comes to the trumped-up Politically Correct issues in question.
Secondly, there most certainly are real victims in this world. Though—no shocker here—the Hollywood royalty fails to utter a peep about them.
Islamic militants in countries around the world, and ISIS in particular, were busy slaughtering innocent human beings in the most savage of ways even as the Oscar recipients were preoccupied with the allegedly “unequal” treatment of women, blacks, and illegal immigrants in America. As jihadists were denying their victims their virginity, freedom, skulls, families, homes, and lives, Patricia Arquette bemoaned that America denied women a paycheck “equal” to that of men. John Legend whined that America denies blacks the right to be imprisoned at the same rate of whites (while omitting any reference to the higher rates of criminality among blacks). And Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu lamented that America denied illegal Mexican immigrants the opportunity to live in the country unmolested by our pesky laws.
Recommended
Christians in Muslim lands are suffering persecution of a kind that is as unrelenting—to say nothing of murderous—as anything that we’ve seen before.
On Monday, February 23, in the northeastern section of Syria, approximately 100 Assyrian Christians were abducted by “the Islamic State.” Jihadists invaded their villages and carted off men, women, and children. Thousands of former residents of these villages have already fled their homes for the larger cities as they know all too well of ISIS’s advance.
One Assyrian Christian woman who made it out told the Associated Press that she desperately fears for the lives of her parents, her brother, sister-in-law, and their children. They were taken captive by ISIS. Speaking anonymously, she said that “land lines have been cut and their mobiles are closed.” The woman expressed her agony: “Have they been slaughtered? Are they still alive?”
As for ISIS, its on-line radio program, “al-Bayan,” reported that it had captured “tens of crusaders” and ten villages.
A couple of weeks ago, ISIS barbarians videoed them beheading 21 Egyptian Christians.
According to Open Doors, an organization dedicated to “serving persecuted Christians throughout the world,” of the planet’s 50 worst places of Christian persecution, nearly 80 percent of these countries are Islamic.
Remember all of the fuss that Michelle Obama made last year with her “hashtag” campaign over the hundreds of young African Christian girls that Boko Haram abducted from a school?
To judge by the Oscars ceremony the other night, we have to conclude that, like the jihadists’ victims elsewhere, these poor girls are out of mind.
Hell, let’s set aside Third World Christian victims of Islamic oppression for a moment. Why, we can wonder, did not one of these Social Justice crusaders at the Oscars utter a single syllable about the Charlie Hebdo mass murder in France? After all, the Hollywood activists doubtless believe that this was an attack on “free speech,” and they doubtless see themselves as being proponents of “free speech.” Didn’t this recent assault merit at least some mention?
Of course, we know damn well why our courageous Hollywood bigwigs stick to the issues of “white racism,” “sexism,” “classism,” “xenophobia,” and the like while ignoring such topics as Islamic militancy: our Hollywood elites—like most people, particularly those in academia and the media—aren’t courageous at all. They—like most people, particularly those in academia and the media—like to see themselves as being courageous. But they’re not.
This explains why they prefer to shadow box by inventing bogeymen rather than confront real evil.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member