As far as I can tell, these award shows exist so that very rich people can feel good about themselves. As if it were not enough that talentless cretins get paid millions of dollars for standing in front of cameras, they get little gold statues too and the platitudes they utter while receiving them get to be nodded over by a significant portion of the sentient adult population. These people feel entitled not only to our money and our time but our adoration. They also insist upon being seen by the rest of us as indescribably woke. This mostly involves graciously allowing other rich but not quite so famous people to enter their homes in order to meet and give money to Hillary Clinton. Presumably no one of importance in Hollywood was unaware of Harvey Weinstein’s character, but it didn’t matter for decades until a small coterie decided to acknowledge the reality of sexual assault by very courageously wearing $100,000 black dresses at the Golden Globes.

One thing I want to know is whatever happened to snobbery. Surely there was a time not very long ago when intelligent young people skipped out not only on awards shows but on the Super Bowl, top 40 radio, and video games as a matter of course. How I long for the days when celebrity culture was considered trash by all right-thinking persons and teenagers aspired to Proust and free jazz rather than Beyoncé and woke comic book movies. All of those contemptuous instincts have been transferred from art to the world of brunch and IPAs. The future of being highbrow is not chain smoking in your turtleneck with your copy of Ulysses; it’s eating duck nachos while you live-tweet The Bachelor.