The Oscars and Donald Trump - narcissistic fools?

Is there any occasion in public life more nausea-inducing than the Oscars?

I sometimes wonder. I never watch it of course, but any engagement with the outside world at this time of year involves 2nd hand acquaintance with the awards ceremony cavalcade, an event at which those successful at climbing the greasy pole mingle with their fellows, network furiously, tout for business and pretend to be gracious when they don't win anything, all the while preening before the proles circling resentfully down below, those less fortunate, less rich, less talented, less beautiful and less sycophantic.

Oh, and less pretentious.  Here's the actress Viola Davis, accepting her award for best supporting actress in Fences - "I became an artist and thank God I did because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life", Ms Davis gushed. As an artist of a sort myself, I can confirm that we are no better at celebrating our lives than any other demographic. Is it wrong of me to hope that Ms Davis is obliged to return to waiting tables fairly soon, so she can better reflect on what it means to be lacking in self-awareness?

But anyway, on to the main business of this year's ceremony, namely the mix-up which led two accountants from PWC handing Warren Beatty an envelope containing the wrong card for the winner of Best Picture.  Readers will be aware that La La Land was announced and that the makers were some way into their acceptance speeches before the mistake was corrected.

I've seen both La La Land and the eventual winner, Moonlight, and thought both over-praised.  La La Land's purported critique of Hollywood is toothless to say the least compared to Altman's The Player (its one good joke is at the expense of the ubiquity of the Toyota Prius: that's how satirical it is), its plot implausible (there's neither showing nor telling why the principals' career commitments should have ruined their relationship) and, in a musical whose McGuffin is devotion to jazz, its score is unforgivably lame and bland.

As for Moonlight, a coming of age movie about a young gay black boy, it is well-made, well-acted, and has a good score but is too long and just a bit dull. The most interesting plot development (boy goes to prison for beating his bully and upon release becomes a successful drug-dealer) is skipped over entirely. Yes, being bullied for "being a faggot" is pretty horrible (although surely no worse than being bullied for being posh or for liking classical music or for anything else you can think of), but good art entertains as well as informs. I could see no reason for Moonlight being a film as opposed to say an article in the paper.  And what would that article have said?  Young gay people get bullied at school? Not exactly news.

So in the age of Trump a film with gay black people wins Best Picture. Not surprising, not in a climate where Meryl Streep can be lauded for making an acceptance speech in which she lambasts the new President - surely the least career-threatening outburst in the history of thespianism.

Donald Trump will probably not have been watching the Oscars, but I expect that when he heard about the cock-up by some other narcissistic fools he will have laughed long and hard at his tormentors.

PS The two best films I've seen this year were Hell or High Water, a contemporary western in which Jeff Bridges pursues two bank-robbers trying to raise the money to prevent foreclosure of the family ranch, and Toni Erdmann, a three-hour German comedy about a divorced father's relationship with his daughter. Hell or High Water, relentlessly entertaining but insufficiently portentous for Oscar-bait, features Bridges on magisterial form with his True Grit Rooster Cogburn shtick turned down to acceptable levels. Toni Erdmann has a sex scene which ensures you'll never look at a cup-cake again; and for all its length Moonlight seemed a hell of a lot longer.

Brexit, Donald Trump and the pointlessness of protest

I've written a couple of days ago about the singular opprobrium reserved for Donald Trump by (self-described) Liberals, who seem to be incensed far more by the be-coiffed one's temporary ban on visitors from some (largely) Muslim countries than they are by, for example, the Turkish Premier's imprisonment of judges and closure of hostile newspapers.

Why should this be?

Well for a start Mr Trump is in charge of a country whose culture lives in our own and to which we feel very close. Turkey and China on the other hand are far-away countries of which we know nothing (and of course even the bien-pensant don't seriously expect Johnny Foreigner to uphold the same standards as we do). Liberals always hate their domestic political opponents and pass easily over the flaws of overseas leaders. See Jeremy Corbyn for details. Moreover Donald Trump is a person who has contributed to the seismic assault on the certainties of their political and social class which began with the 2015 election, continued through the Brexit vote and concluded (perhaps) in the US in November. Their assumptions lie in ruins. They have therefore particular reasons for hating him more than other leaders with a far worse record.

These are people (and I'm one of them so I should know) who thought that by virtue of their intelligence, affluence, power and influence they were born to rule. They - we - have reacted with horror verging on petulance to the discovery that they live in democracies and that other people who lead less gilded lives are not quite as pleased with their lot.

The class I'm talking about first responded to Brexit by asserting that the poor were badly educated, ignorant and stupid (thus demonstrating that whatever they are, they aren't liberals at all). They then, slightly more charitably, elaborated their analysis by observing that the underclass were lied to (as if other election campaigns had been the acme of truth, and as if the UK government hadn't used taxpayers money to lie to its own citizens).

Brexit has had a six month head start however, so Britain's intellectual bed-wetting classes are still at the anger stage regarding Trump. Hence the petition and marches.

Trump is pretty loathsome. His ban on travel to the US is irrational, hurtful and pointless (you are more likely to be killed in the States by an armed toddler than a gun-toting Islamist), but it is not racist (Muslims are not a race - if they were, how come you can become one?) and it isn't even anti-Muslim (if it were, why didn't Trump include the world's biggest Muslim population, Indonesia?)  Of course, if there really were a group of people who were pervasively hostile to the US Trump would be well within his rights to keep them out.

The marches will do absolutely no good and have no influence on Trump or May. I heard a Trump aide interviewed by some low-wattage radio presenter - possibly Martha Kearney - yesterday. Was not the US administration worried that Middle Eastern countries like Iran might impose a reciprocal ban? The aide actually laughed in response, and you could almost hear her thinking, "Why would we give a fuck about what Iran does? Why would anyone want to go to such a fly-blown shit hole anyway?"

Trump will no doubt do other stupid and repellent things in the next four years. But he is leader of the most powerful country in the world and we can do much to influence him. Theresa May's engagement with him has already borne fruit in the restatement of his "100% commitment" to NATO.

Those in the US who hate and fear Trump would do well to concentrate their energies on other things than protest. They could consider whether the people that put Trump in the White House had any legitimate grievance, for example, and if so how to put together a group of policies which might make them vote Democrat in 2020. The Democrats could consider how to select a candidate who showed some sign of understanding their problems, who they could trust to try and address them, who was not in the pocket of Goldman Sachs and who did not merely represent the accumulation of power, favours and influence or the continuation of a discredited dynasty.

We could do with ideas like that in the UK too, but as long as the opponents of Trump, Brexit, and austerity carry on marching, organising petitions and knitting pussy hats instead of sitting down and thinking how to make policy adapt to the realities of the world (instead of the other way round), they will achieve nothing.

The thought remains that it was precisely because of the failure to come up with ideas which might overcome the intractable domestic consequences of globalisation that Trump won and the UK voted Leave. The Left has had years to come up with answers, but they haven't even begun thinking about the problems.