Tag: Politics

Lover of Basketball Phil Jackson Tunes Out

Phil Jackson is the personification of pro basketball. The widely recognized giant of the sport has walked, talked, and breathed the game for most of his life.

Over time he has found himself in the role of player, coach, and executive and has racked up wins with each endeavor.

As a power forward for 12 seasons with the New York Knicks, he won two NBA championships. As the head coach of the Chicago Bulls, he brought home six championships. And during his coaching stint with the Los Angeles Lakers, he secured another five league titles for his team.

Jackson actually holds the all-time highest win-loss percentage of any pro basketball coach. But shockingly, the legendary sports figure now finds professional basketball unwatchable.

This revelation appears to be one more sign that the strange times in which we live are getting stranger by the minute.

Jackson finding basketball unwatchable is like Mark Zuckerberg finding Facebook unusable. Or Taylor Swift finding music un-listenable. Or Meryl Streep finding award shows un-attendable.

In an interview on a podcast called “Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin,” Jackson let it be known that for him tuning in was no longer fun.

“I am not enjoying the game,” he stated, adding, “There’s a whole generation that doesn’t like the game.”

He stopped viewing NBA games in 2020. That was the year of the lockdown, where playoff games had to be played with no fans in attendance, and viewers had to have their eyes assaulted with woke messages displayed on the backs of players’ jerseys.

Jackson noted that the politically charged phrases had taken the place of players’ surnames.

“They had things on their back like, ‘Justice.’ They made a funny thing like, ‘Justice just went to the basket and Equal Opportunity just knocked him down.’ My grandkids thought that was pretty funny to play up those names. …I couldn’t watch that,” he said.

Plenty of sports devotees reacted in a similar manner. Capturing the sentiments of countless others, Jackson called out the NBA for pandering and virtue signaling, and for having picked the wrong venue for political posturing.

“They even had slogans on the floor and the baseline,” Jackson said. “It was trying to cater to an audience or trying to bring a certain audience to the game, and they didn’t know it was turning other people off.”

To emphasize the point that sporting events should be free from political expression, Jackson said, “Politics stays out of the game. It doesn’t need to be there.”

A glimpse into the former coach’s upbringing gives some insight into how he gained the reputation of an individual who makes decisions within a philosophical context. His parents Charles and Elisabeth were both Assemblies of God ministers.

Along with his two brothers and half-sister, Jackson grew up in a remote area of Montana. Dancing and television were not allowed in their home.

He saw his first movie when he was a senior in high school and attended his first dance when he was in college. In those earlier days, it was assumed that he would eventually become a minister.

During his professional coaching days, he became known for using Tex Winter’s triangle offense, along with the implementation of a holistic approach to coaching, which was influenced by Eastern philosophy. Consequently, sports writers dubbed him the “Zen Master.”

He advises players to express their political beliefs outside of the league and off the court. He points to athletes, such as Bill Bradley, who have successfully pursued political careers. As a result of his outspokenness, he has predictably been attacked on social media.

The world of sports is going the way of Hollywood. Sports execs would be wise to heed the Zen Master’s warning, if they don’t want to suffer the same fate.

After all, the scoreboard doesn’t lie, and neither do the ratings.

Culture Is Politics and Vice Versa

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Andrew Breitbart once famously said, “Politics is downstream from culture.”

What Andrew was conveying is the idea that changes manifested in the culture will likely produce parallel changes in politics.

I myself contend that the country has changed so dramatically, the culture is now inseparable from politics and politics is inseparable from the culture. In other words, culture is politics and politics is culture.

There is no place in which the culture has been kept sequestered from the political, and likewise there is no place in which the political has been kept at arm’s length from the culture. In a very real sense it has taken on an eerily seamless quality.

An additional aspect that has affected the political-cultural relationship is the social media. In its advent, social media literally took the nation by storm. People, though, were too busy living through an immersion experience for the records to fully realize the unprecedented phenomenon it truly was.

Then there is the whole notion of search engines. These are the vehicles that enable us to gain access to the storehouses of information contained on the internet.

We all know that the use of digital devices has exploded. To millions of people, it feels as though these mini-computers are extensions of our bodies. If denied them for any length of time, the psyche may operate as though a piece is somehow missing and experience digital deprivation anxiety in the process.

And so it is that we find ourselves racing headlong into a confluence of digital forces. How were we to know that the power to control digital life itself would ultimately be concentrated in the hands of a few select individuals who run the Big Tech companies?

This year COVID lockdowns and woke content altered the way in which Americans consumed their digital amusement. Some eye-opening ratings help to tell the tale.

Recently, The New York Times took a hiatus from attacking the president long enough to notice that a watershed moment was taking place in the viewing habits of a central medium of our age—television.

While under COVID house arrest, the prime-time viewing audience preferred to watch one network over all of the others. The network of choice was none other than the oft-maligned Fox News.

This constituted a major shift of the culture, so much so that even the Times felt compelled to report it.

It is not surprising that Fox News would be on top when compared to other cable news outlets such as CNN and MSNBC. Fox has dominated this space for 18 years running.

But for Fox News to become the preferred prime-time destination over the increasingly woke broadcast and cable entertainment offerings? This was unexpected and turned out to be downright scary for the left.

“In June and July, Fox News was the highest-rated television channel in the prime-time hours of 8 to 11 p.m. Not just on cable. Not just among news networks. All of television. The average live Fox News viewership in those hours outstripped cable rivals like CNN, MSNBC and ESPN, as well as the broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC, according to Nielsen,” the Times reported.

“That three-hour slot is a narrow but significant slice of TV real estate, and it is exceedingly rare for a basic-cable channel to outrank the Big Three broadcasters, which are available in more households and offer a wider variety of programming,” the Times added.

“Even the return of live sports did little to stop the momentum: The Fox News programs hosted by Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity drew more live viewers than competing baseball and basketball games, including a Yankees-Nationals matchup on Opening Day,” the Times said.

Fox News is a place where folks can uniquely experience a pushback against virtually all of the other media outlets. They also get treated to a healthy dose of American exceptionalism.

In the past, the formation of American culture, even when dominated by the left, was still occurring in a free market environment. This is what we know as the American model, the one that allows more innovation and creativity than any other governmental approach ever has.

But now we see signs that our nation is moving towards a new model, one that embraces authoritarianism and seeks to implement a political agenda.

It is an emerging totalitarian model in which elected leaders impose selective lockdowns and arbitrary mandates using public health as a pretext. A model in which the same elected leaders allow, facilitate, and even cheer on criminal, insurrectionist, and terrorist acts. A model that encourages the erasure of national history, heritage, and identity in order to fit a far-left narrative.

Most tragically, it is an emerging totalitarian model that looks more like the Chinese communist system of governance than anything previously associated with the United States of America.

The Agenda-laden Reboot of ‘Party of Five’

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That Hollywood would be walking hand-in-hand with the Democratic Party in an effort to shape the mindset of the culture-at-large is nothing new.

However, the idea that entertainment products would have morphed into super-sized mallets that would then be used to hammer left-wing agendas into folks’ heads is.

The routine insertion into entertainment content by Hollywood of “woke” themes and characters is clearly illustrated in a highly altered supposed reboot of a previous 1990’s television show, “Party of Five.”

The original “Party of Five” ran from 1994 to 2000 and starred Neve Campbell, Scott Wolf, Matthew Fox, and Lacey Chabert. The series dealt with the Salinger family’s five children, who were forced to fend for themselves after their parents were killed in an accident by a drunk driver.

Hollywood’s updated version, which airs on the Disney-owned cable network Freeform, has none of the original characters and is missing a majority of the themes that were present in the initial “Party of Five.”

The redesigned show features a Mexican family in which sibling children are forced into orphan-hood when their mom and dad are deported.

In reality, the series is not actually a reboot but rather a radical re-imagining that utilizes one of the favorite memes of the left.

The original show’s setting was San Francisco, and it had a run of six seasons. It aired on Fox and helped to launch the careers of its cast, including one particular co-star, Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Despite its having been on the air more than two decades ago, the original show features themes that to this day continue to resonate with viewers.

Even though the series was categorized as one designed to attract teens, the issues with which the Salinger family had to deal included a character’s battle with cancer, another character’s battle with alcoholism, a young woman who was a victim of domestic violence, and naturally the show’s primary focus of the children being minus parental figures.

Because the series had relatively low ratings in its first and second seasons, the speculation at the time was that it might not be renewed. However, after it won the 1996 Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series in the drama category, its ratings and popularity grew for most of the remainder of the show.

Original creators Chris Keyser and Amy Lippman are spearheading the storytelling in the revised version, although the two showrunners have seen fit to abandon the original characters and plot line.

Lippman told The Associated Press that she and Keyser had turned down previous offers to bring the show back over concerns that they did not want to incorporate the same story line with new actors. But Lippman also indicated that the pair had changed their minds after reading front-page stories about children being separated from their parents.

“We have told this story before but it was imaginary,” Lippman said. “Now it’s actually a story that is playing out all over the country.”

“In the previous show, we didn’t need to be specific to a culture or a political climate,” Lippman added. “This family is very concerned about [its] status.”

Lippman noted that the show hired a mostly Latino writing staff.

A trailer was recently released that spotlights the deportation and immigration story line featuring five Hispanic children who struggle to survive following their parents’ deportation to Mexico.

The trailer shows the parents being separated from their children, opening with an inflammatory scene that shows the family patriarch being asked for his papers and being led out of a restaurant by government law enforcement.

Although the first episode’s airing has yet to be announced, reports indicate that it will hit the airwaves in late 2019, just in time for the pre-election mind manipulation of the public.

Oscars Ratings Woes Continue

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This year’s Oscars should have been a win for Hollywood, but trouble still follows Hollywood’s once prestigious annual event.

According to preliminary figures, ratings for the 91st Academy Awards were up slightly. Unfortunately, it is not enough to assuage anxiety over the awards show’s downward trend.

The second host-less Academy Awards ended up having the second-smallest audience in Oscar history. Audience size for this year was 28 million, according to the calculations of The Hollywood Reporter. This figure is up about 6 percent over the disastrous Kimmel-hosted show’s preliminary ratings of the previous year. Viewer-ship size was based on a 20.1 rating/33 share in metered-market households.

In 2018 box-office revenues seemed to have ticked up, and a lot of folks who were watching this year’s show had actually seen three of the Best Picture nominees: “Black Panther,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and “A Star is Born.” “Panther” took in a haul of more than $700 million in domestic gross, and “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “A Star is Born” each earned over $200 million. The success of the cinematic trio should have been enough to garner a larger audience than had been seen in the past few years.

It has been downright gloomy for those following the trend in ratings for the Academy Awards show. The overall concern over whether the Oscars were losing their allure was palpable. Last year’s show, which was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, fell double digits from the previous year, sinking to the lowest ratings level for the show ever.

Although the ratings of all awards shows have been on the decline, Disney-owned ABC had to have been alarmed when it learned that viewer-ship for the 2018 Oscar show had dropped 25 percent in the key 18 to 49 demographic.

This year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tried a number of different things to give the sagging ratings a jumpstart. It released a series of proposals, all of which received significant backlash with the end result being the same – a cave by the Academy at the first sign of pushback.

In late 2018, the Academy came up with an idea for a new category that would grant awards to “popular” films. The thinking was to try and include nominees and winners that movie fans simply adored, thereby creating more buzz and bringing in more viewers. The blowback by film artists of all types was fierce, and the Academy relented.

The Academy tried picking a popular host that might prove to be a ratings magnet. It reached out to the highest paid actor currently in the industry, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. However, The Rock’s shooting schedule got in the way so the pick was a no-go.

Oscar leadership then turned to another popular Hollywood figure, Kevin Hart. The attempt to secure the mega-successful comedic actor turned into a PR debacle for the Academy. Hart had a decade-old tweet history that came back to haunt him. Once again the leadership couldn’t handle the flack that it received. CEO Dawn Hudson reportedly telephoned Hart to ask him to apologize for his past Twitter posts. This infuriated Hart, and he ended up withdrawing from the hosting gig, leading to the decision to broadcast a host-less telecast for the first time since 1989.

Then there was the time issue. For years, ABC-Disney had been pleading with the Academy to shorten the length of the Oscar telecast. The Academy leadership came up with an arrangement to abbreviate the normally long-winded telecast by awarding four of the ceremony’s prizes during the commercial breaks and then craftily editing the award winners into a later show slot.

Although the Academy believed that consensus for the plan could be developed by showing representatives from various branches a video demonstration of the newly conceived format, a high profile rebellion caused the Academy to reverse itself. Major creative players in movies, which included Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino, signed an open letter condemning the idea. A few short days later the Academy melted.

Producers of this year’s show were able to cut 35 minutes from the overall length, when compared to the previous year. This was done by eliminating montages and mid-telecast comedy. However, the telecast still ended up being about 3 hours and 20 minutes long.

A December 2018 Morning Consult/The Hollywood Reporter survey found that ABC and the Academy were correct in their attempt to shorten the Oscar telecast. Forty-eight percent of adults said the Oscars telecast was too long.

A close second in annoyance terms to the overly long airtime of the Oscar show is the political content that is being pushed by Hollywood celebrities. The poll indicates that 39 percent of adults are less likely to watch awards shows when celebrities express their political views, and the number rises to 59 percent when viewers self-identify as Republicans.

Reportedly, in addition to the perpetually failing effort to shorten the duration of acceptance speeches at the Oscars, the Academy and producers of the telecast were apparently working hard behind the scenes to convince presenters and recipients of the awards to leave their politics at home.

Well, it didn’t work. Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Maya Rudolph, the first group of presenters at the awards show, joked about the proposed “popular” film category, and apparently Rudolph could not restrain herself from tossing a political barb into her intro punch line.

“We are not your hosts,” Fey was quick to explain. Rudolph interrupted saying, “So just a quick update in case you’re confused. There is no host tonight, there will be no popular movie category and Mexico is not paying for the wall.”

Other presenters were quick to follow suit. While introducing the Best Foreign Language Film winner, actor Javier Bardem, who delivered his remarks in Spanish, took a veiled swipe at President Trump’s border security measures.

ABC translated Bardem’s speech in the following way: “There are no borders or walls that can restrain ingenuity or talent. In any region of any continent, there are always great stories that move us. And tonight, we celebrate the excellence and importance of the cultures and languages of different countries.”

Following Bardem’s comments, comedian Keegan Michael Key placed an open umbrella on the ground, imitating the president’s actions in 2018 prior to boarding Air Force One.

During his acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay, director Spike Lee jumped into campaign mode in making a pitch for the 2020 presidential election, saying, “Let’s make the right choice, let’s be on the right side of history.”

“The 2020 election is right around the corner,” Lee said.

Tim Allen: Liberals Have a ‘Very Small Window of Sense of Humor’

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In a recent interview with IndieWire, film and television star Tim Allen reacted to the astounding success of his current TV sitcom “Last Man Standing.”

During the interview, the actor provided some insight into his approach to comedy writing and delivery, particularly his use of humor directed at left-of-center ideology.

“I think it’s funny to make fun of people that are full of themselves. Liberals have a very small window of sense of humor about themselves, so I love poking at it,” Allen said.

Allen brought up a current practice in which many liberals routinely engage; that is, the avoidance of rational debate via the mallet of identity politics.

“[R]ight now liberals, particularly progressives, hide behind large concepts,” Allen noted. “If you don’t agree with them, if you don’t agree with that position, then you hate women, and you hate gay people, and you hate pro-choice people…”

Revealing a bit about the motivation behind his style of humor, Allen said, “I like p***ing people off,” adding that “…there’s nothing, especially in this area, that p***es people off more than a very funny conservative.”

“A smart, funny conservative that takes shots and is certainly self-effacing. The left-wing point of view is so pervasive that they don’t even realize it’s a point of view,” Allen said.

Allen’s show is in its seventh season, having enjoyed six successful seasons, until ABC inexplicably canceled it and Fox brought it back. The Fox network picked up “Last Man Standing” and has been running away with it in the ratings. The actor has rightly questioned whether ABC chose to get rid of the successful sitcom because of Allen’s personal political positions, an explanation that is certainly within the realm of possibility.

“When we knew Tim was up for doing it, we jumped at the chance,” Fox Entertainment President Michael Thorn said. “He’s obviously a huge TV star, and we felt the show could resonate for our audience.”

Helping with the decision was the huge ratings success of the reboot “Roseanne.” It was certainly not lost on the Fox executives that both shows were family-oriented comedies, with lead characters that possess conservative political views.

Ironically, “Roseanne” was also canceled by ABC. And ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey, who terminated sitcom star Roseanne Barr, is now on her way out amid ABC corporate parent Disney’s pending acquisition of 21st Century Fox and the planned reorganization of Disney television.

Adding to ABC’s headaches is the fact that the replacement series for “Roseanne,” “The Conners,” is tanking in the ratings. The network has committed to only one additional episode, sparking rumors that the show may be canceled. Additionally, it has been reported that two of the shows stars, John Goodman and Laurie Metcalf, have been asked to take a pay cut.

Meanwhile with “Last Man Standing” Fox is basking in the sunlight of sitcom success. The show’s Sept. 28 debut was Fox’s most-watched Friday telecast in 18 years, with a whopping 2.7 rating among adults 18-49 and 12.4 million multi-platform viewers. Fox has been at the top in the difficult Friday night lineup for six weeks, its longest streak in more than seven years.

“I certainly bumped into a number of people who had never seen the show when it was on ABC, that had found it in syndication. So I was hoping it would get maybe a little bit of boost. I did not expect that number,” Allen said.

Reportedly, Fox plans to place “WWE Smackdown” on Fridays next year, so “Last Man Standing” will likely move to a mid-week spot next season. Until then you can still catch it on Fridays at 8 p.m. on Fox.

In an age of cord cutting and streaming entertainment, Allen still sees advantages in traditional broadcasting. The actor loves the ability of traditional broadcast television to be capable of incorporating current events and issues into the programming. He refers to this attribute as “fresh television.”

“I think eventually, you come back to broadcast television,” Allen said. “This isn’t streaming. Streaming to me is processed food. You don’t know when that was made, you don’t know, there’s no expiration date on it. This stuff was made recently. You get ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and to all of us on broadcast, we’re doing this right now. This is fresh television.”

Taylor Swift Gets Political

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For quite a while now the Internet has had a peculiar obsession with pop star Taylor Swift’s self-imposed political silence.

Liberal-minded Twitter and Facebook users have been posting comments pressuring Swift to join the ranks of myriad other celebrity activists who use their fame capital to move the political bar ever further to the left.

Up until now digital bully tactics have had little effect on the singer-songwriter. However, times have apparently changed in a big way, and Swift, who is currently on a “Reputation” concert tour, uploaded a photo to Instagram that virtually announces her candidate picks for political office in the state of Tennessee.

Swift previously nurtured an image of being above the political fray. In stark contrast, she has now chosen to take very specific positions on a number of polarizing issues in addition to her candidate endorsements.

Letting it be known that she will be voting as a Tennessee resident in the 2018 midterms, Swift announced her support for two Democrat candidates in her home state, one who is running for the U.S. Senate and another who is striving to secure a seat in House of Representatives.

Along with her endorsements, Swift let loose with an over-the-top slam of Republican Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn, who although of the female gender has the seemingly incorrect party affiliation attached to her name, at least according to leftist celebrity activists.

Swift informed her fans that Marsha Blackburn was running for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee and conveyed her emotion-laced opposition.

“As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn. Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me,” Swift shared.

Accompanying her post was a black and white photo in which Swift wears a flannel shirt that makes her look like her old country music singing self.

A number of Swift’s A-list BFFs, including Blake Lively, Karlie Kloss, Katy Perry, and Chrissy Teigen, “liked” the post.

In her political Instagram post, Swift referenced her former approach to avoiding political expression.

“In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now,” Swift wrote.

Swift’s habit of abstaining from political discourse had become part of her public image. In a 2012 interview with TIME, she said that in spite of keeping herself “as educated and informed as possible,” she does not discuss political subjects.

“I don’t talk about politics because it might influence other people,” she told the publication at the time.

In November 2017, a blogger criticized Swift for her political silence and actually accused her of enabling an alt-right and white supremacist fan base.

Meghan Herning wrote a piece titled “Swiftly to the alt-right: Taylor subtly gets the lower case kkk in formation,” which was published in PopFront Magazine. Herning asserted that Swift’s single “Look What You Made Me Do” contains “dog whistles to white supremacy in the lyrics.”

Additionally, referring to the clothing worn in Swift’s related music video, Herning wrote that “Taylor lords over an army of models from a podium, akin to what Hitler had in Nazi Germany.” Herning added that “the similarities are uncanny and unsettling.”

Essentially condemning Swift for her silence, Herning wrote, “And while pop musicians are not respected world leaders, they have a huge audience and their music often reflects their values. So Taylor’s silence is not innocent, it is calculated.”

Herning received a letter from Swift’s attorneys, demanding she retract the article and threatening a lawsuit. The American Civil Liberties Union promptly came to the aid of Herning.

That same month, the left-leaning UK Guardian published an editorial titled “The Guardian view on Taylor Swift: an envoy for Trump’s values?”

The newspaper implied that, in part, because of her silence, Swift was a stealth Trump supporter.

“… a notable voice has been missing from the chorus: that of Taylor Swift, the world’s biggest pop star. Her silence is striking, highlighting the parallels between the singer and the president: their adept use of social media to foster a diehard support base … their laser focus on the bottom line; their support among the ‘alt-right,’” the editorial read.

The Guardian claimed that Swift’s songs “echo Mr. Trump’s obsession with petty score-settling in their repeated references to her celebrity feuds, or report in painstaking detail on her failed romantic relationships.”

In a Politico piece titled “The Weird Campaign to Get Taylor Swift to Denounce Donald Trump,” which summarized the pressure being mounted at the time on Swift to jump on the anti-Trump skateboard, Swift was labeled “studiously apolitical.”

Stats on the pop singer reveal that she has garnered 112 million Instagram followers, 84 million followers on Twitter, and 72 million “likes” on her Facebook page.

It is arguable that she is at the apex of the celebrity pyramid, as liberals who have pressured her to join their ranks are no doubt aware.

Her level of fame grants her greater endorsement power than many of the other celebrities who have been visible participants in left-of-center protests of late.

With all this in mind, there is now a question of whether Swift will be able to hold on to her popularity, and additionally whether she can maintain her sizable social media platform after the public becomes fully informed of her newfound politics.

Oscars with an Agenda

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Over time the entertainment industry and its accompanying award shows seem to have grown ever more political, and the 90th Academy Awards ceremony looks as if it will prove to be consistent with the left-leaning trend.

The Oscars event is ostensibly designed to provide recognition to the highest achievement of motion picture artistry and has conventionally been viewed as the pinnacle of award shows. This year, however, Hollywood has a number of attendant things on its collective mind, including having to atone for a host of industry wide offenses.

Nominations for Best Picture are illustrative of the ideological and cultural issues that are stoking Academy voters’ choices. A few years back the industry was assailed by critics, via a social media hashtag, with an accusation that the Academy lacked diversity in its list of nominees.

This year’s awards season has been under assault by another hashtag, which includes references to the sexual impropriety scandals that have shaken the entertainment capital to its core.

Typically during the awards season, movie studios engage in the equivalent of a political campaign complete with press releases, advertising, and opposition research.

Ironically, Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul accused of sexual misconduct by scores of women, was consistently a seminal figure of the pre-Oscar season and was frequently able to assist his companies in securing Oscar wins. In the aftermath of the serious charges, though, he was fired from the Weinstein Company, booted out of the Academy, and banished from the film business.

In the past, he was also reportedly alleged to have engaged in opposition research in order to diminish the prospects of the film “A Beautiful Mind,” which was competing at the time with the Miramax movie “In the Bedroom.” He purportedly leaked rumors to the press that central subject of the film John Nash was anti-Semitic.

Movie companies routinely use film advertisements that are tagged with the phrase “for your consideration,” seek press coverage, send voters direct mailers, set up star appearances at key industry events, hold lavish parties, and arrange screenings for voters through use of studio lot theaters, distribution of DVDs and downloads of respective films.

For months the campaigning for the 2018 Academy Awards has been in full motion, but the activity has primarily taken the form of studios and production companies touting the current political and cultural significance of their movies.

Best picture nominee, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” is a case in point. After the film debuted at the Venice International Film Festival and won the top prize at the Toronto International Film Festival, the film critic community anointed the movie as a favorite in the award races.

The plot centers around perceived liberal concerns embodied in the hashtag haze that hangs over Hollywood. It may be that Oscar trophies were on the minds of filmmakers who put together a story of a mother railing against a sexist, racist, and patriarchal police force.

Some critics were less than enthusiastic about the seemingly superficiality of the politically correct plotlines of the movie.

Ira Madison III of The Daily Beast characterized the movie as “tone-deaf,” “manipulative,” and “altogether offensive.”

And Wesley Morris of The New York Times referenced the “Three Billboards” filmmakers’ Oscar pandering in the following manner: “The issues of the day come and go: brutal police, sexual predators, targeted advertising. It’s like a set of postcards from a Martian lured to America by a cable news ticker and by rumors of how easily flattered and provoked we are.”

Meanwhile another Best Picture nominee, “The Shape of Water,” which could also take the award, is a highly original movie concept but its creators apparently could not avoid shoehorning into the plot societal issues that may be on the minds of many Oscar voters. It is no coincidence that the female protagonist, Best Actress nominee Sally Hawkins, who has fallen in love with an underwater being, is provided assistance with her romantic goals by an African-American co-worker and gay neighbor.

Other Best Picture nominees sport themes that seek to attract Oscar voters. “Get Out,” a horror genre film from Jordan Peele, contains subject matter that depicts racism and cultural appropriation, while Steven Spielberg’s Pentagon Papers movie, “The Post,” glorifies the press for standing up to attacks and features a noble and powerful female business head.

The fact that the substance of would-be Oscar winning films is so culturally and politically correct is an indication that the 90th Academy Awards show, which is slated for March 4, will no doubt be saturated with a kind of sermonizing that is likely to have Americans briskly switching channels.