Virtue signalling at the Oscars and Penelope's suitors

It used to be the Academy Awards were an event that all Americans had a stake in. Every year, people would latch on to their particular favorites and cheer or moan as they won or lost when the envelope was opened. People's partisanship for one nominee or the other was always good natured. No one whose favorite actor or actress or director or film lost was disappointed for more than a minute. And, the next morning around the water cooler, opinions and preferences were shared enthusiastically, to be sure, but also graciously.

Now, all that has changed. Instead of talking about which actor played the best role, Twitter obsesses over which one made the most biting anti-Trump quip. Instead of arguing over whether Denzel's performance was truly good enough to merit a win this year, the opinion makers whine that he lost because he was black. Gender or immigration issues are shoved in our face at every turn. The Awards have been ruined by the poison of left-wing politicization. They have become another platform that the Left, in its utter tastelessness and disregard for anything sacred, has seized, as if it were just another university building, for the dissemination of political propaganda.

Instead of serving to unify America, the Awards ceremony has become just another symbol for how fractured the country is into Blue and Red. The Blues laugh uproariously at every stupid Donald joke and nod their heads in empathy, their mascaraed eyes (both men and women) tearing up, as one Hollywood celebrity after another strides to the podium and virtue signals:

Virtue signalling is the conspicuous expression of moral values by an individual done primarily with the intent of enhancing that person's standing within a social group. ... [T]he term has become more commonly used as a pejorative characterization by commentators to criticize what they regard as the platitudinous, empty, or superficial support of certain political views on social media. ... Cited examples of virtue signalling towards certain issues include: ... celebrity speeches during award shows.

Could there be a more apt description? Meanwhile, the "deplorable" Reds watching at home on TV (unless a few of them are paraded through the building to demonstrate the Academy's deep regard for the "common man") realize that once again they are being mocked and condescended to by the elites, and just flip to another channel.

I don't know if I have ever seen such self-serving and off-putting cowardice and conformity as was on display at the Awards the other night. As people pontificated about the need to show tolerance for diverse opinions, I kept thinking: "Unless, of course, the diverse opinions happen to be coming out of the mouths of Conservatives. Those opinions are beyond the pale." I kept hoping that some truly courageous actor or actress would step up to the microphone and express a contrary point of view. My hopes were, of course, in vain: whoever expressed such an opinion would be committing professional suicide in politically correct La La Land, in the same way one would commit professional suicide in Silicon Valley or South of Market by, say, wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat to work. I am always struck by the way in which those who signal themselves most tolerant of diversity simply cannot abide the expression of opinions that are truly diverse from their own.

The Academy Awards are not alone, however, in having been poisoned for a large part of the nation. The NFL, too, has been infected by the venom of left-wing politicization (with Colin Kaepernick being the NFL's chief virtue signaller, while at the same time one of its worst play-calling signallers). Even players and coaches in the NBA now feel the need to virtue signal. In fact, the liberal press expects them to. Woe unto anyone on the Warriors (as Mark Jackson found out) who should express a slightly politically incorrect point of view about gays. Every day for Steph Curry is a minefield as he has to express politically correct opinions criticizing the transgender bathroom law in Charlotte, NC, his home town. Watch what you say, Steph!

All of these activities -- watching the Oscars, attending an NFL game, cheering for your favorite NBA team -- were once national pastimes we all, young and old, shared; they were safe harbors to which we could retreat for a few hours to escape the vicious moralizing and self-righteousness of the Left. Now no more. These treasured common pastimes have been poisoned by the ceaseless virtue signalling of the so-called Progressives.

Every time I see Leftists laughing uproariously at stupid Trump jokes, whether delivered by celebrities on the Academy Awards or the buffoonish Alec Baldwin bawling "Yuuuuuuuge" on SNL, I am always reminded of the laughter of Penelope's suitors in Book 20 of the Odyssey. Odysseus had gone to the Trojan War and was thought to have been shipwrecked and lost on the way home. He had disappeared and hadn't been seen or heard from for 10 years. All the local princes of Ithaca had descended on his palace to vie for the hand of his wife Penelope in order to become the new king of Ithaca. The haughty suitors passed their days at the palace in feasting, drinking, and debauchery, eating Penelope out of house and home. But Odysseus had not been lost and had now returned home, disguised as a beggar. He is about to reveal himself, string his mighty bow, and dispatch the reckless suitors to Hades in a shower of arrows, thereby reclaiming his wife and throne. To help him accomplish this, his patroness, the goddess Athena, blinds the suitors' minds to what is about to happen. A fog of delusion descends over their thinking and they laugh uproariously, hysterically, at each other's jokes, oblivious of the impending doom.

In the suitors Pallas Athena
stirred up uncontrollable laughter, and addled their thinking.
Now they laughed with jaws that were no longer their own.
The meat they ate was a mess of blood, their eyes were bursting
full of tears, and their laughter sounded like lamentation.
Godlike Theoklymenos now spoke out among them:
"Poor wretches, what evil has come on you? Your heads and faces
and the knees underneath you are shrouded in night and darkness;
a sound of wailing has broken out, your cheeks are covered
with tears, the walls bleed, and the fine supporting pillars.
All the forecourt is huddled with ghosts, the yard is full of them
as they flock down to the underworld and the darkness. The sun
has perished out of the sky, and a foul mist has come over.

Just as Penelope's suitors were oblivious to the doom right before their eyes, laughing uproariously at each other's stupid jokes, so the Leftists of our day seem oblivious to the doom that they themselves are preparing for themselves in the next election. They laugh uproariously at their own "in" jokes, not realizing they are alienating larger and larger swathes of voters in the heartland, who will deliver to them in the elections of 2018 and 2020 a slaughter even more devastating than the ones they have suffered in the last several years. Keep laughing, suitors.