Hey Hollywood: No One's Watching The Academy Awards

They honor movies no one sees. They shovel politics at the audience. They lecture, they insult, they virtue signal.

Then they wonder why no one is tuning in.

I’m talking, of course, about the annual Academy Awards. When hundreds of Hollywood hypocrites engage in self-congratulatory flatulence masquerading as an awards extravaganza.

Sunday’s television audience was the smallest in 44 years, according to an AP story headlined “Oscars Plunge To A Record Low.” Viewership dropped 20 percent from last year, which already had the second-smallest TV audience in Academy history, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Anyone surprised?

I can remember when the Oscars were a fun night of entertainment and glamour. A dazzling variety show with an amusing host and an audience stacked with actors and actresses who seemed a tad humbler than the current crop. 

Occasionally someone would drop the proverbial turd in the awards punchbowl, as Marlon Brando did in 1973 when he refused to accept the best actor award for his role in “The Godfather” and as Vanessa Redgrave did in 1978 when she used her acceptance speech for best supporting actress to launch a pro-Palestinian rant.

Jarring. Unpleasant. Rude.

Now everyone does it. And the television audience is evaporating.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

In fact, the only Oscars I’ve watched in the past decade were when a pal of mine hosted movie-themed parties at her house. I went for the friends and the food. But snarky remarks aimed at those of us who don’t subscribe to Hollywood orthodoxy always left me cringing.

It’s audacious and mean-spirited to mock Americans who don’t share your political views and then expect them to buy tickets to your movies. 

In recent years, the show has become nothing more than a parade of celebrities in borrowed finery, their lips packed with collagen, their faces frozen by surgery and Botox, sneering at the great unwashed.

I don’t want to be lectured about the #MeToo movement by people like Meryl Streep, who in 2003 leapt to her feet to give accused child rapist Roman Polanski a standing ovation and who once called lecherous Harvey Weinstein “god.”

And I don’t want to be scolded about gun control by people who have armed bodyguards to take them to the gym and who churn out blood-spattered movies filled with senseless violence.

I’d simply like to be entertained. But that doesn’t happen anymore at the Oscars.

So, no, I didn’t watch the awards on Sunday night. Chances are, you didn’t either.

Keep it up, Hollywood. Pretty soon ordinary folks won’t just boycott your embarrassing awards show. 

They’ll boycott your movies.