Joaquin Phoenix at the Oscars. The transformation of Oscars stage to pulpit is complete. Credit : Richard Harbaugh / Getty Images
Awards ceremonies are agonising. You sit there, lumped together with strangers with whom, thankfully, a trench friendship soon develops. There is occasionally a kind of a meal, sometimes an amusingly branded chocolate that provides whole seconds of fun, but more often than not no food at all and an endless supply of alcohol. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the whole business didn’t drag on for hours and hours and hours. You soon tire of spotting notables — “is that or isn’t that his missus from Midsomer Murders?” — across the room.
The self-aggrandising, faux-naïf speeches drag. The host starts to make cracks of the “chin up, we’re almost halfway through” variety. Throughout this process there’s always the outside chance that you might have won something. And then you lose, and a dash of sour grapes is added to the cocktail of physical fatigue, existential ennui, and mild drunkenness.
Why was I there? Why did people tune in? What is the function of prizes? These ceremonies are one of those cultural rituals that we just accept, and everybody goes along with. They’ve always been there and they always will be there, so nobody pays them much conceptual thinking, like herpes or Ken Barlow. But, recently, they’ve turned from an obvious lot of industry puff and guff that didn’t do much harm in the universal schema, into supposedly significant grandstands of the culture war battles, adding an exciting new stratum of nonsense.
These prizes are often old, sometimes very, very old. The first Oscars ceremony took place in 1929, the first BAFTA was handed out in 1949, the first Booker in 1969. The Brit Awards came along in 1977. Most are decided by mysterious secluded juries of the great and the good, though anyone with a BAFTA membership gets to vote in the first round of nominations, which goes some way to explaining why they are often frowned upon, what with their faint whiff of democracy.
Awards voted by the public are disparaged and discouraged, because they show up the gap between what people actually like and want, and what they should like or want. Public votes such as the National Television Awards are about the mass market; stasis, habit, continuity — witness the endless wins for Ant & Dec. The twitter snob reaction to Mrs Brown’s Boys winning Best Comedy at the NTAs was very telling. Art as a thing that tickles or soothes you rather than makes a great statement is regarded as hopelessly improper.
The most obvious purpose of awards is to show the reverse of public opinion, to act as a showy, physical embodiment of the even longer established magazine round-ups or newspaper critics’ lists. A prize is not just the object or the prize money itself. It can keep a cultural product alive, give it a second lift. It enhances the career prospects of the winner. These are all reasonable enough things.
But add grievance, moral purity and racialised thinking as criteria into the mix of ego and whoomf — the balloon goes up. The steady, slow seepage into the arts of HR nonsense and polytechnic critical theory has led to awards becoming flash points of accusation and reaction. They’re #sowhite, or #somale, and everyone gets to pull their ‘terribly concerned’ face or their ‘oh don’t be ridiculous’ face, depending on where they stand. We now have the somewhat silly spectacle of the Booker Prize being given to two people, not because of the quality of the work but because the writers look different.
The licensed fool is an anthropological figure used to puncture pretensions and diffuse tensions in human societies down the centuries. Combine this with the more specific (and slightly baffling to us) American tradition of the ‘roast’, and step forward Ricky Gervais. These interventions allow some steam to blow off, yes — but nothing actually changes. The whole pompous, pious circus rolls on.
This is how the Hollywood of awards season can apparently be both a shining city on a hill dispensing moral lessons and a cesspit of degradation, when in fact it’s just another workplace where law should be applied and crime punished.
The key thing about the licensed fool is that he is licensed. Gervais has (ironically) the privilege of being able, literally, to afford to tell Hollywood to its face that it’s a hypocritical freak show. Anybody working in the arts without that licence cannot risk questioning the smothering zeitgeist, or even to laugh at or question the nuances of sweaty-palm issues like #metoo, or the indisputable moral worth of ‘diversity and inclusion’ drives, no matter how murky their unintended consequences.
No lasting awareness of the ridiculousness is engendered. The licensed criticism just glances off. Just a few weeks later, Prince William — of all people! — was able to pontificate about diversity at the BAFTAs without turning a hair, without even a particle of self-awareness. This got rather lost in the media scrum around certain other global events, but I think it was a really significant moment. It was proof that the ideology of grievance and gesture is now so firmly baked into the establishment that a prince, heir to the throne, can opine on it, as if it was as uncontroversial and uncomplicated a thing as his great-grandmother saying “yes, the weather has been very bad today, have you come far?”.
Pre-regnal finger wagging leads us back to the existential question. What is the function of art? Why does it have to be something more than itself? Art is without morals — it is not a good or a bad thing in itself. Yes, it can bring people together but sometimes it can make them come together in a really bad cause. It can open up debate. It can also close it down.
Joaquin Phoenix’s nauseating ramble at last night’s Oscars put the tin hat on it all, providing us with the definitive mission statement (and it is a mission, in the Onward, Christian Soldiers sense of the word). The deluded bubble politics, the patronising and quasi-religious tone. The function of making movies is, apparently, to “give voice to the voiceless” and to “guide each other to redemption”. Translated, this means giving voice to people who agree with ‘us’, and no, not cancelling those who disagree (such godlike mercy!) but instead steering them off the primrose path for their self-evident sin in disagreeing with ‘us’. The transformation of Oscars stage to pulpit is complete.
The great irony is that by becoming so hung up on niche political concerns, by trying to be good people, the cultural sphere is becoming more sequestered and remote. And we see that very starkly on the nights the prizes are handed out.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeCFPB is Eliz Warren’s intrusion on the exec branch. Her little sandbox, helping her ideology, and painfully few regular folks.
Trumps move to shutter CFPB is anti- Warren. She is all about elite, top down control. Not a populist cell in her body.
No fan of Warren, but if one of Trump’s ‘Little Guys’ begins to find his credit card company starts ripping him off on the interest rate and he’s no protection do you think any connection made to CFPB? Maybe not, but maybe so. It’s all a fun game until…
There is a bill in the Senate, sponsored by Sanders and Hawley, with Trump’s reported support, that will cap CC interest at 10% for all affected voters for the next 5 years.
The agency is prima facie unconstitutional. There is no oversight, no checks or balances. It is the worst of a very sad lot of government cronyism run amok.
It doesn’t take many unintended consequences from the collapsing of such Agencies to change the impression. No doubt one couldn’t contend every decision made by such an Agency universally supported, but if you detonate the lot you are rolling the dice.
Whether sufficient Federal cost reductions materialise to quickly get the Reconciliation Bill through the House remains unclear. Trump wants to spend alot more on Immigration controls and collect alot less, including the Billionaire tax cuts. Extending debt to do this anathema to good number of key House Republicans. That’s partly why the announcements on cuts are well out ahead of the actual confirmation of savings. He doesn’t need to have turned off many to lose his House majority.
But you can already discern the 2026 campaign response – ‘he increased your debt, protected his Cronies Billions and reduced your protections’. Trump needs a surge in living standards or it’s a potential gift.
There comes a point when you have to make hard choices. Sometimes a building is in such poor condition that it’s better to just demolish it and start over. Sometimes that means a lot more work and it may mean it takes a lot longer to get the new structure built, but we shouldn’t avoid doing the right thing because it’s more difficult or more time consuming. The bureaucracy as it currently exists has too much independence and not enough accountability to elected officials. It’s been captured by special interests, billionaires, and corporations, and it needs to be reformed. The bureaucrats who have been acting independently of the government have to be purged and replaced with those who have a proper respect for the Constitution and for democratic rule, and yes, I’m aware that Trump doesn’t have sufficient respect for the Constitution either, but he will be gone in four years and these bureaucrats can be there for decades. Ultimately, if we’re going to put these organizations beyond the authority of the elected President to fire whoever he wants for whatever reason, we should recognize that there is a need for bipartisanship. There should be oversight committees that are required to have equal representation from both parties, or maybe each state can send their own auditor/inspector. We have to get to a point of democratic accountability, and the entrenched interests are likely to be fighting, kicking, and screaming the entire way there. It’s a battle that needs to be fought. Trump wasn’t and still wouldn’t be my first choice to do it, but it needs to be done.
I’m not sure that we should assume any government agency automatically does what it is supposed to do or what it was intended to do without proof that’s what it was actually doing. I have seen many criticisms of how Trump shut down this agency but I have yet to see any of these critics offer anything the organization has tangibly done for any American particularly. If people have been helped by the CFPB, surely somebody ought to be able to find some of them to testify to that effect. Otherwise this just looks like some other government bureaucracy doing God only knows what behind the scenes and without any serious oversight and getting paid by the taxpayers to do it.
After seeing the results of Obama’s health care law, I’m skeptical that anything created by his administration was created without direct input from the organizations it was meant to regulate. That was the MO his health care law established. Put regulations in place that protects the profits of these companies and locks them in at an ‘acceptable’ level in exchange for giving them cover from the vagaries of competitive markets and deflecting the wrath of angry voters. The ACA was basically written by and for insurance companies, ensuring their perpetual existence and perpetual profits indefinitely. It didn’t work though. It has only recently become apparent how much it didn’t work when people cheered for a man who murdered an insurance executive. If these CFPB defenders can produce even one person the agency has helped, maybe I’ll care whether it gets shut down. Until then, I’m defaulting to it’s useless bureaucracy that wastes taxpayer money.
Why do Republicans always oversimplify the ACA? Just because the Affordable Care Act (ACA) relies heavily on private insurance companies doesn’t mean it was written by them. It was modeled after a conservative-backed plan, including Romneycare in Massachusetts, and aimed to expand coverage while maintaining a private insurance system.
Both sides benefitted.
Insurance companies:
The individual mandate forced more (mostly healthy) people into the market, balancing out high-cost enrollees.Government subsidies made plans more affordable, ensuring insurers got paid.Medicaid expansion brought millions of new customers to insurers managing Medicaid plans.Consumers:
Preexisting condition protections meant insurers couldn’t cherry-pick only healthy customers.Medical loss ratio rules required insurers to spend at least 80-85% of premiums on actual care, limiting profit margins.Essential health benefits mandated coverage of services insurers previously avoided.
While insurers adapted and profited, they also lobbied against certain ACA provisions, like the public option. The ACA was a compromise between universal coverage advocates and maintaining a private insurance framework.
Second, I always know when healthy people are weighing in on policies. You won’t have to go far to find stories of the CFPB saving people. My insurance dropped a chemo drug I needed to survive and left me with a 22k bill. Without the CFPB, I wouldn’t have got that money back. I am not sure what rock you are living under, but guess what is the number one reason people declare bankruptcy – medical debt.
Now, the new medical debt rule that would have kept medical debt from hurting people’s credit reports is gone. And we all know that’s why Republicans want it gone – because they don’t care about the sick. Too bad you will be there one day too, and karma is a real b***h.
Thank you for responding. This is just the sort of thing I was looking for actually. I asked for an example of someone the CFPB helped and here you are. This I respect. The people criticizing Trump should be trumpeting your story from the rooftops and sounding the alarm that he isn’t the man of the people he claims to be. That’s surely a sign of the times, that I am believing a random stranger on the Internet before the politicians, government, and most of the media. I never have believed Trump is a true populist or really wants to advocate for the people. I do maintain he is a disruptive influence and accomplishes the purpose of destabilizing the political establishment and their corporate backers so maybe it will create an opening for a real populist to come along and finish the job. He’s better than another corporate shill like Kamala Harris, not that I voted for either of them mind you. Neither meets the required standards for using up 15-20 minutes of my day.
You can’t convince me the ACA wasn’t a sellout though, because I believe that the insurance companies should not exist period. They neither provide healthcare, nor do they consume it. They are parasites, plain and simple. It is classic rent seeking for revenue streams to fund financial speculation, pure greed that has nothing to do with health care. That is why they exist, to fund Wall Street speculation. That’s all insurance companies by the way, not just medical insurance. Ever wonder why there are laws that require people to buy car insurance? It actually is a racket. Insurance companies are little more than rent collection agencies for Wall Street trading funds. Whatever the solution is, they should get no part of it. That’s what I won’t forgive Obama for. He is smart enough to know all this, and he should have had the courage to bring it all out into the light and take his case directly to the people. For all that he gets wrong, Trump at least has the courage to go directly to the people. For that alone, people will overlook quite a lot. Obama should have been the one to do that. He was elected on a platform of hope and change. He failed to deliver. I voted for the man, and I have not voted since, not for Trump or anyone else. Obama allowed the corrupt system of insurance companies and employer provided healthcare to continue to exist in exchange for them making it marginally less awful and unfair. He sold out, plain and simple. We, the people, have the right to demand better than this. If I ever see it, I might vote again. Had Sanders won the primary in 2016 or 2020, I might have voted for him. I would support single payer healthcare or Medicare for all. While I don’t believe it would improve the healthcare system as a whole based on the evidence we have from similar systems in places like the UK, it would finally and forever cut the insurance parasites out of the process.
Further, you’re wrong. I actually was one of the people who couldn’t get insurance because of a pre-existing condition. Believe it or not, it is possible for a person to believe and reason that the optimal solution for society is not simply the one that advances his or her personal fortunes or interests. I would prefer a competitive marketplace where doctors and hospitals charge fees and patients can compare prices and choose the best option, and then those who can’t afford healthcare below a certain income level get vouchers, something similar to education vouchers. This would encourage and encourage providers to compete on the basis of quality and price for customer dollars, and the entire industry would be more efficient, lean, and responsive. The current system is frankly the worst of both worlds. We have all the bureaucracy, red tape, delays and problems of a national health care system, and we still have people going bankrupt. Further, if I ever get cancer, I will most likely choose not to treat it at all, as I don’t have the financial resources to pay and I refuse to burden my family with medical debt. I think I’d rather make the best of the time I have rather than try to extend my life and be bled dry by a parasitic system that preys on the sick and the poor for the sake of funding Wall Street’s endless quest to get rich without actually producing anything or doing anything productive.
Parasites. Not true. Profits are tiny compared with other businesses. Their existence allows the government to play fairy godmother by leaving the judgements about cost and necessity to them, unlike Canada and the UK where the state run systems do the tough parts. If you think a state run system will be better, look into Canada and the UK for waiting times. Close to home, check out the Veteran’s Administration, the Indian Health Service, or the estimated billions in fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. Be careful about what you wish for.
The definition of a parasite is an organism that derives sustenance from the activities of another organism, called the host. In order to be a parasite, the organism must take resources and nourishment from the host and thus cause harm without providing any meaningful benefit. They fit the definition, as they do not provide health care nor any other service related to health care to patients, yet their profit comes entirely out of a series of transactions that could and would exist without them. According to the definition, insurance companies are parasitic to the healthcare system because A.) they do not provide health care nor improve it any identifiable way and B.) depend upon the healthcare industry for their own sustenance, and C.) cause harm by distorting free market competition in a way that’s essentially no different than governments setting prices. I don’t see how that can be any clearer. How much money they make relative to other industries is irrelevant. Whether they make ten million dollars or ten, that’s money that should go to the people who actually provide the service or the people who pay for it. I could live for years with a tapeworm and still be mostly fine but I’d still want it gone if I found out I had one. I honestly don’t think much would change if we went to single payer healthcare. I think it would be mostly the same as it is now since Medicare, Medicaid, and the insurance conglomerates already effectively set the prices. For all intents and purposes, we already have a national healthcare system. It will still be better than the UK/Canada because the government isn’t running the hospitals. What would be better than either would be to eliminate employer healthcare coverage and medical insurance and let the marketplace function through the mechanism of competition between healthcare providers on quality and cost and allow the government to provide vouchers for the poorest to get access to healthcare that providers can then redeem from the government without all the overhead, bureaucracy, and financialization.
Obama disappointed alot, but you fall into the trap of assuming he had such a strong position in Congress at the time he could be much more radical than he eventually was. He was also initially consumed with the Financial crash. He basically managed to extend cover to millions more by with some legal coercion to take out insurance. And that way extend the risk pool which made it viable. But the market for insurance was insufficient to stop costs continuing to rocket.
So I agree the US system a disaster. The World’s richest and most developed Nation but with millions still without proper healthcare cover and millions screwed on the smallprint. It’s partly because of vested interests, but it’s also partly because social solidarity much weaker culturally in the US (with maybe some of that a racial legacy too) meaning Galbraith’s ‘private affluence, public squalor’ more true today than when he wrote it.
Well, I was younger and more naive then. Perhaps I overestimated Obama or misjudged him. Whatever the reason, Obama was not the change agent he advertised himself to be, but he could have been if he had really wanted to and had some courage and determination I believe Obama could have gone directly to the people with his message and confronted the institutional powers that be and the people would have had his back. I think he could have been a transformational, visionary leader and done a better job than Trump, but maybe he never was what he advertised himself to be. Maybe he was just another corporate shill pretending to be on the side of the people. Maybe he lacked courage. Maybe he was even threatened. Who knows, but for whatever reason, he didn’t take his case directly to the people and offer to fight the establishment. Trump did, and here we are. A reality television personality has brought the political establishment to its knees. Trump understands real power comes not from money, but from loyalty, devotion, and a shared sense of purpose. For all their money, for all their institutional control, for all their domination of the media and the bureaucracy, the donor class could not buy Kamala Harris the presidency. Their failure is worth something even if the winner does nothing. Trump has shown what can be done. Even now, he uses the popular will to overrule the establishment. Does anyone seriously believe Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, or RFK Jr. would have been confirmed if the voting were done secretly? Of course they wouldn’t, but it’s a public vote, as it should be, and the Senators would have had to declare their opposition to the popularly elected President, which very few did, because they feared the wrath of voters, and when politicians fear the voters, they are more apt to listen to the voters and consider public opinion, and that’s something that has been missing in this country for far too long. Where government fears the people, there is liberty. That’s the thing that’s good about the Trump movement. It sent a message. It reminded the oligarchs that this is America, and the people expect the politicians to obey, not the other way round. The real power comes from the people. For all he gets wrong, Trump at least understands that. Even if he fails, and that’s a strong possibility, the message will remain, and the door will be standing wide open for the next revolutionary outsider who can capture the public’s mood.
Nonsense. This type of board is a wealth redistribution scheme initially proposed by Harvard’s “First Native American Law Professor” Elizabeth Warren.
It’s role is to essentially to hand out financial reparations and grant debt waivers with very little accountability or discernment. It is Socialism plain and simple.
Furthermore, Trump’s 2017 tax cuts immediately increased the disposable income of of every working person I know. It did not increase the disposable income of people not working.
Populism and Socialism are not synonymous concepts. Its becoming clear how the Kulaks felt during the collectivization scheme in the Soviet Union.
You could make an argument that Trump is just following his promise of draining the swamp. Hidden government expenditure and hidden debt are part of the swamp – favouring those who have jobs ‘managing’ the visibility of such items.
It’s not an assault on consumer protections. If the CFPB is anything like our financial regulators, the FOS and FCA, it is simply more bureacracy that generates costs for financial service providers – costs that are, of course, paid for by consumers – without actually providing any real protection. London Capital and Finance anyone?
Independent investigation into the FCA’s supervision of London Capital & Finance – GOV.UK
The only effective consumer protection is caveat emptor.