Posted on 01/10/2020 5:19:15 AM PST by Kaslin
Ricky Gervais, the perpetually snarky British comedian, set social media on fire after he mocked arrogant Hollywood in his opening monologue when hosting the Golden Globes.
"So if you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech, right?" he said. "You're in no position to lecture the public -- about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg."
Uh-oh. Gervais explained that his approach was to mock the "privileged egos in the room" as if he were "the bloke sitting at home who shouldn't have been invited." It was too accurate to be funny. It stung. Los Angeles Times TV critic Lorraine Ali spoke for the Tinseltown crowd when she wrote, "The last thing anyone needed was for the smirking master of ceremonies to reprimand them for having hope."
Here's what Ali doesn't get. It's not that celebrities are dumber than average, though so many undoubtedly are. But being an actor or a director doesn't make you smarter. No one tends to look up celebrities' level of education when they pontificate -- or, as would be more appropriate, their level of expertise on whatever issue is floating their boat.
Add to that the arrogance they internalize for being an "artist" with the added "humanity" of pretending to be all kinds of different people. Their "compassion" is expected to overrule any question about their knowledge.
Of course, Gervais couldn't stop the inevitable pompous political speeches. Most notable was actress Michelle Williams' insisting she never would have arrived at her high station in Hollywood life without the ability to get an abortion.
Surprise, surprise! Williams stopped going to school at 15 -- a nearly exact match for Gervais' Greta Thunberg joke.
The other passionate speaker of the night was Patricia Arquette, who decried our nation being "on the brink of war" with "a president tweeting out a threat of 52 bombs including cultural sites, young people risking their lives traveling across the world, people not knowing if bombs are going to drop on their kids' heads." She urged everyone to vote (Democrat) in 2020.
Arquette ran away from home at 14 and never went to college. She has no expertise on foreign policy, national defense or geopolitical thought.
Everything that followed the Gervais comedy routine underlined his critique. Embarrassed by the Americans' taking out Iranian terrorist mastermind Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Michael Moore obsequiously apologized to Iran -- in Farsi.
Moore dropped out of the University of Michigan, Flint after his freshman year. One safely assumes his knowledge of Farsi doesn't go beyond those words.
In the same week, Moore spoke on his podcast to actress and model Emily Ratajkowski, and they both professed their support for Bernie Sanders for president because capitalism is the "enemy."
Ratajkowski attended the University of California, Los Angeles for one year and then decided to model full time.
When President Donald Trump spoke to the nation about taking out Soleimani, comedian Kathy Griffin mocked him for mispronouncing the word "tolerated." She tweeted: "This should be an exhibit in one of the articles of impeachment. They should just quietly add it as, y'know 'exhibit 1958542785' or something. #Trump #SniffyMcAdderall." Trump isn't just dumb; he's on drugs.
Griffin never went to college. Her parents wanted her to go. She wanted to be famous instead.
Rosie O'Donnell tweeted, with no capital letters or basic punctuation: "wake me in november -- its just too much -- cant Americans see he is high AF -- cant pronounce 5th grade words ... #RemoveAndIndictTrumpNOW."
Rosie O'Donnell washed out of two colleges.
We're not saying everyone who didn't finish college is a dummy. We are saying that these famous entertainers who act like America's smartest should keep in mind how the joke can be turned around on them -- as it was by Ricky Gervais.
An extended quote from H. L. Mencken on actors presuming to be intellectuals, hence, worth listening to. The following is an excerpt from a piece entitled ‘The Cerebral Mime’ originally published in his Prejudices series.
“Of all actors, the most offensive to the higher cerebral centers is the one who pretends to intellectuality. His alleged intelligence, of course, is purely imaginary: no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured to the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured to bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night. That nonsense enters into the very fiber of the actor. He becomes a grotesque boiling down of all the preposterous characters that he has impersonated. Their characteristics are seen in his manner, in his reactions to stimuli, in his point of view. He becomes a walking artificiality, a strutting dummy, a thematic catalogue of imbecilities.”
Yes, a polemic and therefore open to criticism, but much truth here. I would also apply this to singers.
Which reminds one of that quote from Alfred Hitchcock:
“I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.”
There are exceptions to be sure but I’ve never viewed actors or professional athletes as founts of wisdom.
I also love this from Robert Heinlein:
“[T]here seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously—after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and sub-literate every time he opens his mouth.”
Worth watching clip. I noticed they panned to deniro during the light hearted parts, but stayed away during the lines about them not being in any position to lecture the rest of us.
Despite the careful camera work, there are plenty of frowns and offended celebs to see in the clip. Hanks especially, who is a class A moron.
That must be a factor in their hubris: a surprising number of stars didn’t finish college—or even high school—and yet they found work...in about the only field they are qualified for.
“No one tends to look up celebrities’ level of education when they pontificate — or, as would be more appropriate, their level of expertise on whatever issue is floating their boat. “
Ain’t it the truth? We don’t need drug users, serial wife beaters, bed-hopping idiots, former manicurists or former car park attendants telling US how to vote. I doubt any of them actually ever completed their ‘education’ . If you are a person who does ‘pretend’ for a living, do NOT tell me how to vote or think!!!
Ever notice these people tend to keep their yaps shut UNTIL they’re financially independent?
Also, thought about renting the new Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie until i saw DUH nero was in it.......none for me thanks.
Of course, famous conservative Chuck Heston didn’t fit politically with all these pontificating leftist weirdos, though he was of course politically active for his own causes.
But I’m reminded of the famous story where someone asked Chuck’s son if he knew what his dad did for a job.
“My dad pretends to be other people”.
That’s really it. Somehow I doubt Chuck was instilling an enormous level of arrogance in his kid about dad’s occupation and what it meant.
bump
This is me. The first thing I do when malarkey from some celebrity is posted on FR is Google the name. 9 times out of 10 there is no college, and a drop-out. 99 times out of 100 there is no relevant education or experience to justify my spending more than the 30 seconds needed to know their opinion aren’t worth a thimble full of warm spit.
They heard some words they didn’t like but I doubt much education occurred.
Or former bartenders, for that matter
the leftard loons were Gordon Ramseyed
Don’t forget the numerous Hollywood types are also pedophiles.
I have never seen him called Chuck Heston. Charles Heston or Chuck Norris, both of whom would have probably told their sons the same thing; “My dad pretends to be other people”.
Excellent quotes.
The only actor I know of who is actually a professional actor with real degrees was Dolph Lundgren. And he thinks global warming is a total crock of $$$$$.
To think, we should not take the eternal wisdom of the likes of Jim Carey, Rosie O’Donnell, and Robert De Niro as gospel? Or for that matter the undeniable truth that only a self described un-educated 16 year old like Greta Thunberg on a subject that she cannot possibly have expertise in...
-—damn, I have to stop right there. The sarcasm at this intensity could cause a rip in the universe...
Yup. The stupidity of celebrities wouldn't be a problem if not for the stupidity of much of the public.
The film’s are getting so filthy they are actually screwing each other in public. This is open and not art.
Oh, you have to watch it. At least the end. Where the Joker is on DiTV w/ DiNinny. I actually clapped in the theater, best part of the movie!
I’m surprised the author didn’t mention Jeffrey Katzenberg in that list, the mega-producer and Democrat bundler of Hollywood, not to mention so left-wing he arguably made the rest of his Hollywood friends seem moderate by comparison. That guy dropped out of NYU a year after acceptance into it in order to help with John Lindsay’s presidential campaign, and that was DESPITE Lindsay’s stunt as mayor of New York being an unmitigated disaster, causing over a million people to leave New York City within a decade (in fact, him even thinking he did a “good enough job” as Mayor in New York City despite the obvious damage he inflicted to that city to spread that crap nation-wide as president goes to show he’s probably got screws missing from his head.), and even implied his later backing and supporting Obama was rooted in his earlier participation in John Lindsay’s campaign. I’d even consider him the worst had Bill de Blasio not beat him out via his overt Marxist politics and arguably making the city even WORSE than under Lindsay (and that’s an accomplishment onto itself). And then he pretty much squandered Disney’s Renaissance to push far left agendas (and came pretty dang close to ruining both Toy Story AND The Little Mermaid, the latter movie being the reason Disney even HAD a Renaissance, and probably DID ultimately ruin Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and by extension the Disney Princess franchise by forcing in far-left feminist agitprop into that movie, including hiring that feminazi hack Linda Woolverton).
Of course, even IF all the above did go to college, not to mention passed with flying colors instead of dropping out or washing out at least once, do you REALLY think they’d be all that smart? After all, Emma Watson actually went to college and graduated fully, and she STILL turned into a left-wing loony. And speaking from personal experience, the professors in college try to have you brainwashed into left-wing views (I just narrowly avoided being brainwashed if I must be honest). And don’t get me started on how Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Michel Foucault graduated with full honors from College in France, and yet were STILL far-left stooges who support every disastrous plan known to mankind, from Stalinism to Maoism to even the Ayatollah’s Iran.
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