Every year about this time, Hollywood reminds the rest of the country just how disconnected it is from the people who actually make America work.
The Golden Globes start it. The Grammys pour gasoline on the fire. And then the Oscars arrive as the grand finale — an annual evening where the most insulated people in America gather together to congratulate each other for their “courage.”
Courage, of course, usually means reading lines someone else wrote about how terrible Donald Trump is.
This year’s Oscar season is shaping up to be no different. Several nominees and industry figures quoted in recent reporting are already warning that the ceremony may become a “fraught political scene,” with anti-Trump rhetoric expected to spill onto the stage. Apparently, the greatest challenge facing these multimillionaires isn’t global instability, terrorism, or economic uncertainty — it’s navigating how to deliver their anti-Trump commentary while wearing couture gowns and standing under $100 million worth of studio lighting.
Forgive the rest of us if we’re not terribly impressed.
The spectacle would almost be funny if it weren’t so predictable. Actors, directors, and producers who rely on entire teams of writers to supply the words they speak in movies suddenly transform into political philosophers when award season arrives. The same people who spend months memorizing dialogue crafted by others begin lecturing the American public about policy, democracy, and morality.
It’s like asking the person who reads the teleprompter to start writing the legislation.
And the result is exactly what you would expect.
A parade of half-informed political takes, dramatic declarations about the fate of the republic, and dire warnings that America cannot possibly survive another Trump presidency.
We’ve heard it all before.
In fact, Hollywood has been delivering the same speech for nearly a decade now.
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Remember 2016? The entertainment industry warned that Donald Trump’s election would destroy the country. Democracy would collapse. The economy would implode. The world would recoil in horror.
None of it happened.
In fact, quite the opposite happened. Under Trump’s leadership, America experienced record employment levels, a booming stock market, and a foreign policy that actually deterred adversaries rather than emboldening them.
Then came 2024.
Once again, the same celebrity chorus declared that Trump’s return to the political stage would usher in catastrophe. Once again, the predictions were dire. Once again the warnings were apocalyptic.
And once again, the American voters ignored them.
That’s the part Hollywood never seems able to process.
If these celebrities are as influential as they claim, why do their political endorsements seem to have the opposite effect?
Why is it that every time the entertainment industry unites to lecture the public about Donald Trump, he ends up breaking new electoral records?
The answer is simpler than Hollywood is willing to admit.
The people who run the entertainment industry do not live in the same country as the rest of us.
They live behind gates. They live with private security. They live in neighborhoods where the problems facing ordinary Americans rarely penetrate.
Illegal immigration? Not an issue when your property is guarded and your schools are private.
Crime? Not when you have security details and surveillance systems that cost more than most Americans earn in a year.
Economic anxiety? Not when your last film paid you eight figures.
Hollywood has spent so long living in its own bubble that it mistakes applause from fellow celebrities for approval from the country.
The truth is that most Americans view these award show speeches the same way they view the commercials between them: something to ignore while waiting for the show to move on.
And even that might be generous.
Television ratings for award shows have been falling for years. The public’s appetite for political lectures delivered by people who pretend to be superheroes for a living is declining rapidly.
It turns out that Americans prefer authenticity to performance.
That reality explains the political disconnect as well.
While celebrities gather in ballrooms to criticize Trump, the rest of the country has been watching the results of his policies.
They’ve seen adversaries pushed back rather than appeased.
They’ve seen American energy production expand rather than shrink.
They’ve seen economic policies that prioritize American workers rather than global bureaucracies.
And most importantly, they’ve seen a president who speaks to them directly rather than through a carefully scripted monologue.
That authenticity is something Hollywood struggles to replicate.
Because Hollywood is, by its nature, performative.
Everything is scripted. Everything is rehearsed. Everything is choreographed.
Even the outrage.
Which is why award season increasingly feels less like a celebration of filmmaking and more like an annual ritual of elite self-congratulation.
A group of people who make pretend for a living gathers together to tell the rest of the country how reality works.
And every year the country responds the same way.
By ignoring them.
That doesn’t mean the speeches won’t happen. They will. Someone will step to the microphone and declare that America is at a crossroads. Someone else will warn that democracy is hanging by a thread. Someone will inevitably insist that the world is watching and judging us.
But the American voters have already answered those speeches.
They answered them in 2016.
They answered them again in 2024.
And they’ll likely answer them again the next time
Hollywood decides to confuse applause with authority.
Because at the end of the day, the Oscars may determine who gets to hold a gold statue.
But the American people still decide who holds power.
And that’s one award Hollywood can’t script.
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