Don’t Cancel the Oscars to Protest Trump
February 1, 2017 Leave a comment
New opinion piece:
Don’t Cancel the Oscars to Protest Trump
I’m sick of posts advocating for the cancellation of the Oscars to protest Trump. The Oscars are not food! Such a protest isn’t a hunger strike! Hollywood is composed primarily of people who strongly oppose Trump and his policies and I expect many of the year’s recipients and presenters to aggressively go after the Trump administration in the broadcast watched by nearly a 40 million people. If you care about the Oscars, you’re probably already a fairly liberal person. No one is going to say, “I used to really like Trump, but now that the Oscars were canceled in his name, I’m really starting to like Elizabeth Warren.”
But more importantly, Trump does not care about the Oscars. Yes, cancelling it would be a strong statement, but it doesn’t really affect him. Just because Viola Davis doesn’t get a statuette on national television doesn’t influence the Trump/Bannon executive order machine. In fact, considering all of the diverse nominees expected to win (even if La La Land sweeps many categories), I’m sure David Duke would be thrilled to hear of its cancellation as it removes any potential opportunity to show that white supremacy is idiotic.
I’m all for protest. I’d love to see a protest from the G8 until Donald Trump gets his shit together (though, actually that might be a bad idea as it would further isolate us, but you get the point). I love to see the footage of people protesting in Washington and at airports nationwide. These are protests which impact the smooth running of the nation and effectiveness of Trump’s inexcusable policies. But depriving the nation of the Oscars, which is an admittedly frivolous but usually enjoyable event anyways, just seems unnecessary.
Lastly, I believe that Fox News and OAN and Trump’s backwards logic will interpret such a cancellation as his victory over the Hollywood liberal elites rather than a loss at their hands. “I disrupted their lives so much, they canceled a Tinseltown tradition!” Donald Trump and Steve Bannon use fear and dread, rather than hope, as their primary weapon, making them, for the purposes of this article, terrorists, who want to disrupt their enemies lives. Don’t give them the satisfaction.
,Lane J. Lubell signing off
About Lane J. Lubell
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