Note: I know I have already talked about Michael Moore, but he's just so gosh darn fun that I couldn't help myself. Besides, I wrote this quite a while ago for my old college's paper.
It’s funny how Steve Martin was able to calm down the Michael Moore situation down with a joke, isn’t it? Michael Moore wins an academy award for ‘Bowling for Columbine’ and chooses to use his acceptance time to talk about how he loves non-fiction. Then he goes into how Americans ended up with a fictional president who’s going to war for fictitious reasons. By this time, most of the crowd is booing and quite displeased with Moore.
It seems strange that most of the crowd of academy award nominees acted hostile toward what Moore said, and cheered very much when Barbara Streisand came on stage to present the award for best song. Streisand mentioned the fact that it’s great to live in a country where one is able to express his or her feelings in song or in words. Therefore, most of the crowd gets angry towards a man for expressing a legitimate opinion, but cheers for a woman who makes a broad, all-encompassing statement about free speech.
There seems to be a problem here that is worse than one celebrity who is simply expressing his opinion. Instead, a group of celebrities expressed their opinions all at once. Isn’t it hypocritical to heckle a person for having an opinion, then to cheer a statement about free speech? Isn’t hypocrisy bad? This is confusing. Maybe Adrian Brodie can solve this issue.
Later in the show, Brodie won the award for best actor. The flashing lights and music that signaled the end of a recipient’s speech turned on for Brodie, but he would have no part of that. In a world where free speech is a wonderful asset to have, Brodie had to deal with strict time constraints and shortened speeches due to the fact that previous shows had gone on too long. He told the Academy to ‘hold on.’ They listened. After thanking everyone he wanted to and giving people their proper dues, Brodie went on to say that he hopes the war moves to a swift resolution. He got a standing ovation.
Basically, celebrities seem to cheer for what they believe the public wants. That is why we as the public put celebrities on a pedestal. Their opinions are elevated and much more interesting than regular people’s opinions because they get paid to entertain us. If we don’t like them, we won’t watch their movies or shows and they won’t make money.
Unfortunately, making us happy in this way reciprocally makes us less intelligent. We want to believe that celebrities know what they’re talking about because they’re on television and in movies that we watch and like. People like Mandy Moore and Kid Rock give us opinions and we are apparently supposed to listen.
While college educated people wander heedlessly without jobs and without an outlet for their opinions, morons with little talent and sometimes only their minimal beauty live like royalty. Kid Rock was lucky because he found a good manager to market his music. Otherwise he would still be a hack, but poor with no supermodel girlfriends. Kid Rock got booed off stage many times back when he was performing in Detroit. There wasn’t a very strong following for him. Then all of a sudden he was popular because of a song that wasn’t originally his. Now the public listens to him like he’s some kind of king.
In the case of Mandy Moore, she started out making music. Her music wasn’t awful, but then MTV got a hold of her and she hosted a show where she gave teenage girls advice on dating and makeup. Since Mandy is an attractive person and her records sold more than a few copies, the public looked up to her for her opinions.
How is freedom to speak the way that we choose best summed up? Eminem won the award that night for best song. If Eminem can win awards at major ceremonies, then any old Joe can write about how Steve Martin showed a bunch of celebrities how ridiculous they were acting.