“What’s going on here tonight and what’s been going on since October
is simply filthy and disgraceful. [Applause, boos.] Sexual assault is
horrendous, a crime, but that’s not what this is about. Harvey Weinstein
was a convenient jumping-off point, that’s all. And you know it. What
began with Weinstein has become a full-scale witch-hunt, in some ways
more pernicious than the McCarthyite purges of the late 1940s and 1950s.
“Individuals have been essentially criminalized and ‘disappeared’ on
the basis of unsubstantiated, often anonymous accusations. Some of our
more talented and intriguing performers have had their careers
destroyed. Academy Award winners Kevin Spacey and Geoffrey Rush have
been thrown to the wolves. Poor Louis C.K. has been turned into a
non-person. You know your Julius Caesar, of course, don’t you?:
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.
“Casey Affleck didn’t dare show up here tonight. Only a few years ago
most of you would have murdered a close family member to land a part in
a Woody Allen movie. Now many of you are cheering on the sick and
pathetic Mia Farrow. Shame on you! And where is Matt Damon, who had the
audacity to point out there was a ‘difference between patting someone on
the butt and rape or child molestation’? Ben Affleck, Jeffrey Tambor,
Garrison Keillor, perhaps James Franco, and Roman Polanski still! …
these are the new criminals, the new demons. And as though it were not
enough to destroy careers, you have nominated Christopher Plummer for
best actor, which must be the first time someone has been honored for
directly scabbing on a colleague.
“And the result of all this has been more repression and more
censorship. Women haven’t benefited, except for a few at the top. The
conditions of working women haven’t been affected in the slightest.
-- David Walsh, "The Oscar speech we’d like to hear Sunday night: 'Members of the Academy, what hypocrites and conformists so many of you are!'" (WSWS).