The Craziest Thing About the Oscars Was… Hollywood Wasn’t Woke?

Happy Monday, my friends. Welcome to The Liz Wheeler Show. The biggest story that I can remember in a long time is unfolding right before our very eyes, and a lot of people have not yet begun to pay attention to it. And I think this is a huge mistake. This is a story that is going to touch each and every one of our lives. And I’m talking about the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank.  

This is not something that’s just relegated to the financial world. This is not something that just impacts tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists or rich people with their money in Silicon Valley Bank. This is one of the biggest stories, certainly the biggest story of the year so far. One of the biggest stories that we are going to hear about for a long time. And I want to cover this in depth with you because there’s an aspect of this story that is not being discussed that should be discussed.  

And a lot of people, if you’re anything like me, a lot of people don’t have a baseline understanding of the intricacies of how a bank like Silicon Valley Bank worked, what made it different than other types of banks, why its business model was fundamentally flawed, and how politics played a huge role in this. We’re going to talk about that tomorrow on the show.  

So if you haven’t already subscribed to the show, do so. You don’t wanna miss this. I’m really proud putting this together now. I’m really proud of this, what this show is going to be. And I wanna sit down and talk it through with you so we all understand not only why it’s going to impact all of us, but how politics played the key role in this. So that will be tomorrow. What I wanna talk about with you today is the Oscars.  

Now, you might be thinking, Liz, I don’t care about the Oscars. This is Hollywood. Hollywood is obviously corrupted by the Left. We shouldn’t even, conservatives shouldn’t even be paying attention to Hollywood. We’re just helping them fund their in woke indoctrination of American youth, of the American people. But here’s what I will say to you. Either we care as conservatives about changing the culture or we don’t care. It’s a binary choice. We care about culture or we don’t care about culture. We talk often on this show.  

We, or I should say, I use the word on this show, I use the word based often on this show based. And sometimes people will say to me, what does that mean? What does the word based mean? And a lot of conservatives picked up this new lingo, it’s become fashionable to use in conservative circles. They picked up this new lingo because they read it in an article or they heard it from their favorite podcast host, or they saw it on Twitter, and they just kind of intuitively know what it means.  

The definition makes sense contextually. And I’d like to offer you today, more concrete definition of the word based. The word based means to exist in truth. To be rooted in reality, to be based is more important than to be a member of the Republican Party. It’s more important than identifying as a conservative, because being based means that you exist where truth exists, you pursue truth regardless of where it takes you, regardless of the prevailing party narrative. You are first loyal to truth and reality and only secondarily loyal to establishment political parties.  

And that’s where you should be. That’s where, that’s where I am. That’s what this show is all about. And so what I will say to you today before we talk about the Oscars, which you may not care about, you may say, oh, and that’s not a topic I care about. I think you will once we get going here, because living in truth, you’re not gonna find in every show, in every podcast in conservative media, if that’s the show you’re looking for, I could probably name you a dozen off the top of my head where you can go to find the everyday Republican establishment talking points, the conservative movement talking points.  

But this show, what we do, what you and I do sitting here every day, we’re here to change the culture because the culture has been corrupted by not just the radical, radical left. Even that’s too vague of a term. The culture has been corrupted by neo-Marxism and that neo-Marxism has captured institutions in our country, which underpin the entire American way of life.  

And our, the American government, which right now are threatening our families and our way of life. We can see this with everything from ESG to DEI to critical race theory, to queer theory, to the transgender stuff, to drag queen story hour. We know our institutions have been captured. We know that from the administrative state to big pharma, Dr. Fauci, to elected politicians. Our institutions have been captured. And so what we do on this show, we exist to challenge the culture.  

We exist to take back the culture. And so it’s really important that we talk about the Oscars because the Oscars are the Super Bowl of Hollywood, which like it or not, you can, you can pretend that Hollywood doesn’t exist. You can refuse to partake in the products created by Hollywood because of Hollywood’s ideology. And I totally feel you on that. I largely do the same thing. But refusing to be a consumer is different than ignoring the cultural influence that the products have on people who have not refused to take part in Hollywood. Hollywood still drives the culture like it or not.  

The craziest thing this year about the Oscars, the Oscars didn’t have a moment like last year where Will Smith slapped the living daylights out of Chris Rock. That wasn’t the defining moment of the Oscars this year. Not at all. In fact, the defining moment, the craziest moment of the Oscars was actually the realization that perhaps for the first time, the skeleton of the Oscar’s production wasn’t rooted in wokeness. There were some woke comments, but it wasn’t the same. And I wanna talk to you today, and I wanna tell you about what’s happening behind the scenes in Hollywood right now, and why it is a massive cultural movement about to happen if conservatives and Republicans don’t mess it up. So let’s get to it.  

So the Oscars, I know maybe you don’t care about this, maybe you think Hollywood is woke, which it is. Clearly you’ve heard me talk about this enough times that you know that I agree. Hollywood has been corrupted to its core. Hollywood is an incredibly powerful apparatus, propagating cultural Marxism, perhaps arguably the most powerful apparatus propagating Marxism. I know it has some competition now from the likes of TikTok and the likes of the public school system.  

But since about the 1950s Hollywood, maybe even before that, Hollywood has been one of the biggest propagators of outright communism and now cultural Marxism. And a lot of conservatives, a lot of Christians, as a result, have simply stepped away from Hollywood. They’ve created a parallel economy making their own Christian music, their own Christian movies. There have been conservatives who have made conservative entertainment products, or they’ve just said, you know what, we’re gonna read books.  

We’re not going to patronize an industry that actively hates us, that’s not only trying to indoctrinate us, but is portraying us as being evil people. And like I said, I get that. I largely do that myself. But it is a mistake for conservatives and Republicans, even if we are not patronizing Hollywood with our money and our time to ignore the cultural influence that Hollywood has. Something very interesting happened at the Oscars that conservatives and Republicans ought to pay attention to because we are on the brink of something about to happen in Hollywood.  

As a whole for the first time, 2023, the Oscar’s presentation, starting with the opening monologue, which was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel of all people. This guy hates us conservatives and Christians. He’s ruthless towards us on his show every night. And maybe the few people that watch him would have an idea about that. But in his opening monologue at the Oscars, Jimmy Kimmel was actually not woke at all. Take a listen to this.  

Want you to have fun. We want you to feel safe. And most importantly, we want me to feel safe. So we have strict policies in place. If anyone in this theater commits an act of violence, at any point during the show, you will be awarded the Oscar for best actor and permitted to give a 19-minute-long speech. No. But seriously, the academy, a crisis team in place. If anything unpredictable or violent happens during the ceremony, just do what you did last year. Nothing.  

Sit there and do absolutely nothing. Maybe even give the assailant a hug. And if any of you get mad at a joke and decide you want to come up here and get jiggy with it, it’s not gonna be easy here. A few of my friends are gonna have to get through. First. You’re gonna get, have to get through the Heavyweight Champ Adonis Creed. Before you get to me, you’re gonna have to do battle with Michelle Yeoh. Before you get to me, you are gonna have to beat the Mandalorian before you get to me. You are gonna have to tangle with Spider-Man. You are gonna have to tangle with Fable Man.  

And then you’re gonna have to go through my right hand, man. Guillermo, if you want to get up to this tape. Oh, wait a minute. Not, hold on. I should say the other Guillermo. Not, not, not Del Toro. The Yes, that one. Okay, there you go. I know he’s cute, but make no mistake. You even so much as wave at me, that sweet little man will beat the Lydia Tar out of you. Okay, there will be no nonsense tonight. We have no time for shenanigans. This is a celebration of everyone here. You told us you wanted all the categories back in, and we listened. They’re all back in.  

Okay, so color me, shocked. This is not what I expected. Jimmy Kimmel is one of the wokes individuals in Hollywood. He clearly buys into the woke ideology that’s evident on his show every night. He’s not even funny in his propagation of a woke ideology, he makes so-called jokes about us conservatives and Christians that aren’t even funny. They’re not veiled shots at us, they’re just shots at us. But during the Oscars and his opening monologue, he displayed two things that will begin to connect this pattern that I’m going to paint for you in this show.  

The first thing that he did is he re-established what the Oscars is supposed to be, meaning making fun of themselves. Historically. Historically, at these awards shows, actors and actresses are supposed to be self-deprecating. They’re supposed to make kind of light jokes at each other’s expense. But what they’re not supposed to do is use it as a pulpit to vilify us.  

Jimmy Kimmel reverted back to that something that the Oscars had lost in the last few years. He also showed, and this is very key to a point I’m gonna make later, so remember this, he showed that the Academy is listening, and he actually said that. He said, you guys wanted all of the categories back. We listened, and they’re all back. So the Academy listening is a key part of the point that I wanna make. One more thing though, Jimmy Kimmel did make one political joke, early on in his monologue. And believe it or not, he made a joke about Hunter Biden. Take a listen.  

This is my favorite duo of the year. Steven Spielberg and Seth Rogan. What a pair. The Joe and Hunter Biden of Hollywood. Seth, what are you on right now? Be honest. Nothing. Mushrooms, right? Did you give one to Steven? Give him one. Let’s see what happens. Maybe it’ll make something crazy.  

Maybe the only thing more surprising than Jimmy Kimmel making a Hunter Biden joke at Hunter’s expense was the fact that, did you hear the audience? This is all Hollywood in there. They cracked up. Everyone laughed, which means that the joke landed not just for us at home. The joke landed for people in Hollywood, which shows where they, their minds are on this. Later on, Jimmy Kimmel did make one joke about Tucker Carlson. A little joke about the January 6th videotape.  

So I would say, in all fairness, if we are just calling balls and strikes here, if we’re just grading him exactly. Then for politics, it was net zero. One little joke at Hunter Biden’s expense, one little joke at Tucker Carlson’s expense, it’s essentially net zero, which again, is unheard of at the Oscars. And then of course, we have, we have two things that happened at the Oscars that not only were just the absence of wokeness, which is kind of how I would categorize Jimmy Kimmel’s surprising monologue, just the absence of wokeness surprised me. There were two moments that were, I would say the opposite of woke. And one of them was when an Oscar winner actually used the words American Dream. Take a listen to this.  

My mom is 84 years old and she’s at home watching. Mom, I just want an Oscar. My journey started on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp, and somehow I ended up here on Hollywood’s biggest stage. They say stories like this only happen in the movies. I cannot believe it’s happening to me. This this is the American dream.  

That was Ke Huy Quan, by the way. He won best actor in a supporting role. The American Dream, though, can you, when I heard that, I was like, what? What? They actually praised the American dream and got cheers from the audience again, for saying something positive about the American dream. Someone being able to come to America and make it big, have these equal opportunities for all people to achieve and to prosper and to excel. That is the American dream. And of course, the Left has lost sight of that, but surprise, surprise, at the Oscars, it was something that was a big hit. Then of course, we have a rendition of Happy Birthday that was sung to a young man, a co-star, who had Down syndrome Watch this video.  

This award is actually the second most important thing about today because it’s this man’s birthday. He’s out here in Hollywood. We’re in a left print suit jacket. We’d love to use the rest of our time up here to sing for James.  

Happy, happy birthday. Happy birthday. Happy, happy.  

That was for, best Live action, short film. For those of you who are paying attention, I gotta confess, I pay a little less attention to who the winners are when it comes to the movies, A little more attention, a little more attention to the presentation and the politics of the actual Oscars awards show, which I know is gonna horrify some of you. But I’m just telling you how I look at this. Which is why I tack on.  

Oh yeah, that was the winner of the Best Live Action short film instead of introducing it beforehand. So it’s not that there weren’t woke moments, there actually were woke moments, but it’s very important to distinguish between woke moments that were part of the presentation of the Oscars, meaning endorsed by the academy, endorsed by the apparatus, the show itself, versus actors who, when they get ahold of the mic and are saying things that are not pre-approved by the academy, by the Oscar’s production, they have the freedom to say whatever they want. They then express their individually woke opinions. And that’s the wokeness that we saw tonight was the latter. It was individual actors expressing their wokeness. The makeup artist for Wakanda forever won, and she was incredibly woke when she received her award. You can take a listen to it. This is just a short clip of it.  

Beautiful work. Wow, nice. Nice to see you again. Thank you to the academy for recognizing this superhero that is a black woman. She endures, she loves, she overcomes. She is every woman in this film.  

Now, of course, it’s not that what she says is incorrect, it’s that the Left always looks at people through the lens of race, right? They’re always trying to spark this racial divide. So it’s not that what she said about black women is wrong or that there’s anything bad about what she says or that I disagree with what she says. It’s that it always comes through the lens of race, right?  

Well, that’s the racial thing, but, let me interrupt myself here. What she’s saying is not part of the Oscar’s presentation. This is her individual opinion. So it’s through the lens of critical race theory, maybe because that’s how the Left always looks at race. But the Oscars or the Academy wasn’t promoting it. The same with Jamie Lee Curtis. She brought up the transgender ideology and was promoting that, although she kind of contradicted herself and recognized that she unintentionally contradicted herself, and it was quite amusing. Take a listen.  

There are 65 women this year nominated for Academy Awards across various disciplines. How does it feel for you to be amongst that number?  

Surreal and proud. And, obviously I would like to see a lot more women be nominated so that there’s gender parody, in all the areas, in all the branches. And I think we’re getting there. We’re not anywhere near there. And of course, the inclusivity then that involves the bigger question, which is, do you, how do you include everyone when there are binary choices, which is very difficult and is the mother of a trans daughter, I completely understand that.  

And yet to degender the category also I’m concerned, will diminish the opportunities for more women, which is something I also have been working hard to try to promote. So it’s a complicated question, but I think the most important thing is inclusivity and more women, I mean, basically just [inaudible] more women anywhere, anytime, all at once.  

Is that the funniest thing? Because she starts out saying, being a feminist, women, this, women that. And then she says, but we also have to be inclusive of “trans women” who are biological men who identify as women. But then she circles back and says, but actually that erases feminism so she’s correct. It does it, it erases actual women. If “trans women” who are biological men who identify as women, identify as women and then win women’s awards, then actual women don’t get to win those awards. To see that blow up in one short sentence is a thing of beauty to behold.  

But again, this kind of wokeness, even though it was accidental wokeness, which she then contradicted herself and almost took the base position on, but then didn’t. It was her opinion. This is the point, is that the wokeness that we usually see at the Oscars in the presentation didn’t exist.  

And the reason for that is actually what I want to dive into a little more depth. Why is this happening? Was this intentional? Was it accidental? Was it a fluke? And the answer to that is no, it wasn’t accidental. I wanna give a little bit of a peak behind the scenes what’s happening in Hollywood, because what’s about to happen, it hasn’t even yet started to manifest, or maybe the Oscars last night were the very beginnings of the public appearance of what’s going to be a massive cultural movement. Not that Hollywood is becoming ideologically conservative.  

That’s obviously absurd. There’s still rife with cultural Marxism. They’re still completely corrupt. But Hollywood is starting to learn a business lesson. Hollywood is starting to learn that you can’t run a business for profit while you are actively vilifying half of your consumer base. In other words, Hollywood cannot continue to ridicule and demonize and hate conservatives and Christians and still hope to be a profitable industry and also a cultural influence.  

The wokeness that we see in Hollywood, there’s always been wokeness, there’s always been leftist ideology, there’s always been communism actually in Hollywood for a long time, almost a hundred years in Hollywood since the 1950s, I guess that’s what, 70, 80 years. But the recent wokeness, like the critical race theory and the queer theory stuff that started in about 2014.  

It escalated in 2016. So first under the Obama administration, and then when Trump became president, when he was elected, that’s when stuff really, really got nutty in Hollywood. And Hollywood started acting through these lenses. Like Hollywood actually acted out what we just ridicule. They acted out critical race theory, which is discrimination against white people. They acted out DEI which is not diversity, it’s not equity, it’s not inclusion, it’s religious persecution. It’s actual racism, it’s intolerance.  

They started acting out these tenets of wokeism in a way that turned off more people than they could afford to turn off. And so what happened is, first of all, we got a couple headlines in the lead up to the Oscars. I noticed this year the Oscars are gonna be a little bit less political. And I didn’t pay that much attention to those headlines because you usually see somebody trying to make that claim to get clicks, usually see that report leading up to the Oscars, maybe as an effort to try to get more eyeballs, more conservatives, more Republicans to watch the Oscars. But this year it was actually true. It wasn’t that political of a presentation. Now you can make the argument that the content that was presented was still pretty woke. And that’s true.  

But the presentation comparatively is, was inarguably less political than usual? Hollywood is getting the message because this is key here, because people that work in Hollywood are starting to lose their jobs. People are losing work because of the wokeness that Hollywood has embraced. Take Disney, for example, what happened at Disney recently, they’ve recently announced that they are cutting billions of dollars in new content.  

Why? Because their stock prices have fallen, because their consumer base is smaller, because of the wokeness agenda that was exposed. That is, that underpins Disney. We can all see it in every Disney product from their feminism to their critical race theory, to their queer agenda that they embed in children’s programming. This wokeness is costing Disney’s business money, but when Disney’s business is earning less money, they’re profiting less. That doesn’t just mean that we can sit here and point a finger and say, haha, Disney serves you right?  

It means that the people that work for Disney are going to lose their jobs. And that’s what’s happening. And that’s not just happening at Disney, that’s happening all over Hollywood. People, workers, this could be lower-level actors, everyone on the set behind the scenes and on camera of smaller productions. They aren’t getting funded. People are being let go or laid off or not being able to find work because wokeness is negatively impacting the bottom line of these businesses that do need to profit in order to continue making content.  

This is something that for the very first time, we are seeing our activism, our decision not to participate in Hollywood. Our voices, our conservative voices, are finally starting to matter in Hollywood. So what we’re seeing in Hollywood is not an ideological awakening. I’m not suggesting that Hollywood is an incredibly powerful, incredibly important, I would call it a critical apparatus for the propagation of neo-Marxism in our country.  

So don’t misunderstand or misconstrue what I’m saying. I’m not at all saying that all of a sudden Hollywood is being red pilled. No, no, no, not at all. But if you noticed what happened at the Oscars tonight, they not only was there an absence of woke in its place, they were talking about actual filmmaking.  

They were talking about Orson Wells, for example. They were talking about cinematography. They were talking about the things that go into the production of a movie, which is what they should be talking about. They should be talking about which is the best products, not what is the pet ideology. Which film embodies the pet ideology. The best, the point of all of this is that we’re almost to the point where we’re going to see a turning point in Hollywood, because Hollywood understands based on what’s happened to them in the last 2, 3, 4 years, that you can’t alienate conservatives.  

When conservatives actually follow through on our activism, actually follow through on the things that we say when we say, listen, if Hollywood’s gonna produce things that portray Christians as being bigots, portray conservatives as being transphobic, portray all of us as being evil, then we’re not going to subsidize what you do. We’re not going to be part of your industry. So, you know, my motto is to be skeptical. My motto is to question everything.  

And I want to reiterate this point because I want to, I wanna be fully clear on my point. I am not suggesting that the people in Hollywood, whether it’s the actors and the actresses, whether it’s the people behind the scenes, whether it’s the ideological leaders, meaning the richest movie stars, or the production houses, or those that fund them, I am not suggesting that these people are converting to conservatism.  

I am not suggesting that they’re being red pilled. I am not suggesting that they are seeing our side or that Hollywood is not still a force for evil. Hollywood is still a force for evil. These people that run it are bad people. They’re propagating content that is not good. It embraces cultural Marxism. And that is not changing, that is not changing.  

But the intentions don’t always match the ideology. So just because Hollywood is continuing to embrace an ideology that you and I know to be an evil ideology, does not mean that their actions in this moment, in this presentation, or perhaps slowly moving forward are bad. So for example, at the Oscars, there was an absence of woke in the production. Now, maybe the intentions behind that absence of woke is because someone’s being red pilled. That would be good, a good intention, or maybe the intention is impure.  

Maybe that intention is because Hollywood, in a sense, wants to pander to you and to me, they wanna say, actually, we’re not gonna call you evil if you tune in, we’re not gonna tell you you’re a bad person and then try to sell you our product. We’re just gonna stop calling you a bad person and see if you like our product. And if you like our product, maybe you’ll be convinced to buy it. So you can have impure intentions and still do something that’s ultimately a good thing. And that is what I am suggesting is happening in Hollywood. And it’s a very good thing because it’s not accidental. This is not accidentally getting something right. This is a result. It is actually a reaction that we are seeing from Hollywood or that we’re about to see from Hollywood. That we have just begun to see from Hollywood.  

It’s a reaction to us fighting the culture war. It’s a reaction to us saying, I’m not gonna watch Hulu and Netflix if they promote, remember that borderline, it wasn’t even borderline that pedophilia movie called Cuties that Netflix produced a couple of years ago. The one where it was these underage children, these almost, I think they were prepubescent girls that were dressed in these scandalous sexualized outfits. They were twerking, they were portrayed, it looked like child pornography.  

And as a result of that, millions of us said, I’m out Netflix, I will not patronize your platform even if you have other things that are good, even if you have other things that I like. If you’re also going to propagate something that’s so grotesque, something that’s so horrendous, and Netflix felt that there, it was not a few people, it was not a few dozen people.  

This was a movement of people that caused harm to Netflix’s business. The same thing happened with Disney when Disney’s executives were exposed by Chris Rufo in that meeting that they didn’t know was being recorded, where they said, yeah, we’re intentionally inserting a queerness agenda into our children’s programming in order to try to indoctrinate children without ideology, millions of parents across this country said, okay, well, we’re gonna unsubscribe. We’re canceling our Disney Plus subscription. We’re not gonna go to Disney World.  

And it hurt Disney’s business to the point that we could all see the stock prices plummet, but also they’ve canceled billions in content and they’ve had to lay off people. People have been out of work. So when Hollywood, when we say, or when the Oscars removes wokeness from their programming, doesn’t mean they’re red. Pilled might be impure motives might just not being, they might just be trying not to turn us off.  

But that reaction is the result of what you and I have spent the past few years doing, and that is what we call voting with our money, putting our money where our mouth is. Now, I used to be a skeptic of boycotts because we were in a different time in our country. We are in a different place with our country. And I thought, you know what? I can do more good doing direct political activism than I can boycotting a company or a corporation that’s woke trying to make my voice heard.  

That the landscape has entirely changed in our country. When we have this ESG structure that underpins big businesses and woke corporations, that essentially forces them, even if their executives aren’t woke, that forces them to operate looking at environmental, social, and governance metrics that are radical leftist political policy agenda items and forces them to make business decisions, not based on what’s best for their business, but what’s best for these political agenda items.  

Then we are actually voting when we do use our money to patronize businesses that reject ESG and to boycott businesses that propagate evil things in the name of sometimes DEI in the name sometimes of inclusion, and tolerance, and racial justice, and environmentalism, and sustainability, and whatever else words the Left is using to cloak their ideology here.  

This is what they’re seeing. Hollywood is seeing that it’s bad business to be woke. They’re seeing that you can’t continue to, as an entertainment industry, you can’t continue to be the force that they are. I mean, isn’t entertainment like the number two export in the of, of the United States? You can’t continue to be this enormous entity as an industry if you’re failing, and they are failing. I mean, you can talk to any manager, any agent in Hollywood, and they will tell you that it’s harder than ever to place talented people in any number of, of roles, both onscreen and offscreen, because being woke has impacted Hollywood’s bottom line. 

And Hollywood is just beginning to recognize that. Not just recognizing that Hollywood is just beginning to take action on that. And this calls us back. Remember this conversation that we’ve been having on an ongoing basis about how woke is structured like an actual cult where there are three layers of, of people in this cult. There are the outside people or the people that are new recruits to the cult, this outer circle, and they’re kind of the water carriers.  

They repeat the talking points. They probably have he/him on their Instagram profile, but that’s about it, right? They repeat these shallow Tao, but they don’t know what they’re saying. They’re actually in a way, victims of the cult themselves. Even if they’re the most annoying of the people in the cult, they don’t have any idea the ideology that they’re propagating.  

Then we have the people that do understand the ideology that they’re propagating and they totally buy into it. So that would be probably like Jimmy Kimmel, right? He’s not just on the outskirts of the woke, the woke Hollywood cult. He, he knows the ideology that he’s propagating. He knows that this will lead to tyranny and authoritarianism. He’s aware of that, and he just thinks that as an elitist, he will escape the negative consequences of tyranny and authoritarianism and Neo-Marxism in, in that sense, he’s probably right. And then we have the inner circle.  

The people that not only understand the ideology, they understand it to the point that they know that it’s a farce. They know that there is no fake God at the top of the cult. That everything that they’re teaching to all of their followers, their ideological followers and their water carriers is just a way to centralize power for themselves.  

What we’re seeing in Hollywood right now is we’re seeing the water carriers of the woke cult harmed. They’re the ones that are being hurt, and they don’t understand why, because they’re not ideologues. They’re not so committed to Marxism that they’re willing to sacrifice their career and their paychecks and their livelihoods.  

So we’re seeing the bottom level of this cult, the most annoying part, the ones with the loudest voices, the public figures pushing back. And that’s what we saw at the Oscars. We saw the Oscars presenting without wokeness because they need us to be part of Hollywood. They need us to be consumers of entertainment or else their industry will cease to exist in the powerful form that it has existed for a long time. Now, the power players here, were talking about the people that fund the woke agenda, especially the people that fund the woke agenda via the entertainment industry.  

They might not be on board with Hollywood, pulling back a little bit from wokeism, but that doesn’t matter because the people at the very top need the water carriers in order to operate their cult. And if the water carriers aren’t able to work in Hollywood because the wokeness has hurt Hollywood to the point that everyone’s losing their jobs, then the whole thing starts to crumble.  

What we’re seeing right now actually already happened in standup comedy a couple years ago where, where the culture at large, if you will, the neo-Marxist ideologues tried to impose woke standards on standup comedy, and for a minute it worked. But then slowly, one by one these different, pretty famous, pretty prominent standup comedians started rejecting woke. We had Dave Chappelle, that’s probably, he’s probably the most famous one, pushing back on the transgender narrative.  

We had Bill Burr doing the same thing. Joe Rogan has been doing the same thing. I mean, Chris Rock’s new special that just came out was the same thing. Ricky Gervais did the same thing, and standup comedy realized that wokeness would kill comedy. And if comedians themselves didn’t say, stop it, you are putting us out of business.  

If we have woke standards, we don’t have jobs, that would be the end. And so the people involved standup comedy refused it. They said, Nope, we’re not gonna do that. That happened. Just, I mean, that’s that maybe let’s say standup comedy is two years ahead of where Hollywood is right now. They’re two years ahead in that process, but we’re right on the cusp of seeing that exact same thing in Hollywood. We’re the woke standards that Hollywood is propagating. When those woke standards are applied to Hollywood, it becomes cannibalistic.  

It can’t exist with woke standards. People don’t work when businesses are run through DEI because businesses aren’t profitable when they’re run through DEI. Businesses that focus on ESG versus focusing on the consumer and the shareholder fail. And when a business fails, the employees lose their jobs. And these employees are people that work in Hollywood and the people that work in Hollywood, believe me, they love nothing more than their own paycheck and they’ll do almost anything, even rejecting wokeness maybe to get that back.  

Is that potentially what we’re seeing? If that is true, if this is what we’re seeing unfold, then this is one of the most massive cultural moments in modern American history. We might be on the verge of one of the most massive moments in, in cultural history in modern American. If conservatives and Republicans don’t mess this up.  

What I mean by that is conservatives and Republicans, we should continue to criticize Hollywood with everything we’ve got when they deserve it. But we should also be willing and loud and emphatic in praising Hollywood when Hollywood gets something right, because if they do something right, even if their motive is not correct and we still criticize them, then they’re not gonna know what to do and they’re gonna turn back to the wokeness.  

But if we praise the good, positive reinforcement. If we praise what they’re doing correctly, then they will produce more of what we told them was correct, what we told them that we’d liked for them to produce. And that should be a perpetuating continuing cycle tomorrow. Don’t forget, we’re gonna talk about the Oscars was interesting. This is, this is a really important, the most interesting Oscars we’ve ever seen, even compared to last year’s slap.  

However, there is a more important story that’s going to have ripple effects to each and every one of our lives, and that is the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank. What does this mean? What even happened? What caused that? We’re gonna talk about that on tomorrow’s show, so don’t forget to subscribe to the show so that you don’t miss that because it’s both a bad business model at that bank, but also politics that played, let’s call it the fatal role. 

So make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Rumble for that show tomorrow. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. I’m Liz Wheeler. This is The Liz Wheeler Show.