March 7, 2018
By: Linda Case Gibbons, Esq.
I don't know about you, but I thank God every single day for Jimmy Kimmel.
He knows What's What, and isn't afraid to tell us what we should do.
That is exactly what made this year's Academy Awards the success they were.
"If you want to encourage others to join the amazing students at Parkland at their march on the 24th, do that," Kimmel told the Awards audience, and ended his monologue by urging attendees to comment on the Parkland shooting, the #MeToo movement, or whatever else bothered them.
About the rest of America.
It was exactly what made this year's Awards ratings what they were.
If you sensed a certain Hypocrisy during the proceedings, don't be that way. It's just that people like Jimmy Kimmel don't bog themselves down with pesky details.
It's why Kimmel didn't mention that Tamika D. Mallory is an organizer of what they're calling "The Student's March," the same Tamika D. Mallory who organized the Women's March 2017, alongside Muslim Sharia law activist Linda Sarsour.
The same Tamika D. Mallory who is a fan of Fidel Castro, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and Joanne Chesimard, the Black-Panther-Cop-killing-Escaped-Convict who is holed up in Cuba.
Mallory is the Social Justice gal who worked to get Bill DiBlasio elected, thinks cops are "pigs," who shares Barack Obama and Keith Ellison's admiration for Louis Farrakhan, and a fondness for Cuba.
Details, details.
But it's the same approach Kimmel took when he blasted the GOP proposed repeal of Obamacare. That was after his son was born with a heart defect, and required open heart surgery.
"Before 2014," he said, "if you were born with congenital heart disease, like my son was, there was a good chance you'd never be able to get health insurance because you had a pre-existing condition."
Kimmel was factually wrong. If parents have health insurance, a child will be covered under the parents' policy, whether or not the child had a health problem.
But ignorance of Obamacare didn't stop Kimmel from ranting, not for three solid nights in a row.
People were kind to him. A baby was sick. That's sad. But Kimmel wasn't kind or accurate.
He didn't mention that middle class America buys healthcare from the time they start their first jobs; and that these are the same people whose premiums skyrocketed when they had to subsidize Obamacare for people who didn't buy it for themselves.
Kimmel didn't talk about them, The Deplorables, because the entertainment community doesn't think they matter, never putting two and two together to realize that these were the people who didn't tune into the Academy Awards on Sunday, and didn't buy tickets to watch the movies Hollywood produced.
Hollywood loves its actors, and its actors love to act. They like pretending to be outraged by Sexual Harassment in their own industry, and about kids and guns and gun control.
Then they get to wear a pin. They like that. And they get to act insulted, point fingers at others and shun colleagues, like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. Whether Weinstein and Spacey deserve disdain or not, none of the cowards in Hollywood and in politics stood by these men. None protested, "Innocent until proven guilty."
Instead of a "#MeToo," hashtag, theirs should read, "#HellNo.Not Me."
To a man, the industry turned their backs on Kevin Spacey because of what he was alleged to have done. Then, this year, they sang the praises of "Call Me By Your Name," a Man-Boy Love movie involving a 17-year-old and an older man, an associate of his father's.
This flick was nominated for four Academy Awards.
"We don't make films like 'Call Me By Your Name' for money," Kimmel quipped. "We make them to upset Mike Pence."
Kimmel the parent.
No one in the audience said "Ugh," "Eeuw," or "Statutory Rape." None of the parents in the audience. The ones who celebrate their "baby bumps" in People magazine.
But, heck. Things happen. It took the USA gymnastics community two decades to realize little girls, 235 of them, were being abused by USA Gymnastics doctor, Dr. Larry Nassar. Just as its took Hollywood a few decades to discover Harvey Weinstein was allegedly sexually harassing women.
Because of all of this, the moral tenor that now exists in our country made it possible for Facebook to put out a survey that was interesting. The survey asked,
"In thinking about an ideal world where you could set Facebook's policies, how would you handle the following: A private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures?"
When people don't speak up, or speak the truth, it allows the unthinkable to happen. That includes parents who turned a blind eye to 20 years of abuse of their children in exchange for a gold medal.
It includes parents in Hollywood who make needlessly disturbing movies, not acknowledging that movies influence people in deep, meaningful ways. And it includes comedians who use their positions in the entertainment world to denigrate wholesome values and world leaders, just for kicks, with the kids listening, and watching.
We have to protect our children in ways that matter. It's not about Kimmel or awards, it's about the safety of our children. It's up to us to protect them.
But maybe we already have, by not tuning into the Academy Awards, and by not watching the movies Hollywood nominates for those awards.
Hold the line, America.