Cheap virtue-signaling is the name of the game right now in Hollywood.  Citing corruption and a lack of "diversity," NBC has canceled its plans to telecast the Golden Globes ceremony next year.  (Purely coincidentally, ratings for this year's telecast in February were down 63%.)  The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which created the award and collects millions of dollar a year for the broadcast rights, is being attacked by the very media outlets that so lavishly have courted and subsidized it in hopes of gaining favor in the Golden Globes award show.  

The HFPA became a target for virtue-signalers — Netflix and Warner Media along with Amazon have also cut ties with the group — after "[a] pair of extensive reports by The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times in the week leading up to the awards renewed scrutiny on the press association and its 87 voting members."

Just a couple of weeks ago, a former president of the HFPA violated a major taboo, as Monica Showalter reported here:

[A] former eight-time president of guild, Philip Berk, sent out an expose to the group of a Frontline Magazine piece exposing the Hollywood money-making of Black Lives Matter elites.  According to the Times:

An email sent Sunday by a former Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. president criticizing Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors and likening BLM to a hate group touched off a firestorm among many of the organization's members.

In the email, Phil Berk, who served eight terms as HFPA president, shared a post that called BLM a "racist hate movement" and described Cullors as "the self-proclaimed 'trained Marxist.'" It was sent out to the association's members, its staff and the group's general counsel and chief operating officer, Gregory Goeckner.

Even Tom Cruise "is getting in on the virtue signaling, returning the three Golden Globes he won for Jerry Maguire, Magnolia, and Born on the Fourth of July," and Scarlett Johannson "called out the HFPA, saying she faced 'sexist questions' at one of it press conferences.  The Black Widow star urged the entertainment industry to 'take a step back' from the HFPA.  A day earlier, on Friday, actor and Marvel movie star Mark Ruffalo became the first Hollywood A-lister to distance himself from the organization."

I can understand how resentment against the HFPA could have been simmering for years.  It has earned huge sums for broadcast rights to the Golden Globes and is an 87-member group that includes almost nobody working for a prestigious foreign outlet.  Some members aren't even journalists, yet they have accepted gifts including junkets from studios anxious to be able to advertise their products as winners of its Golden Globes.  The very studios signaling their virtue now had looser standards not so long ago:

Like many studios, Netflix has lavished gifts on HFPA members in years past. The streamer reportedly flew HFPA members to France to watch the shooting of the comedy series Emily in Paris, putting them up at a luxury hotel.

But it was "diversity" that is the trigger for the HFPA's outcast status right now.  This ad appeared on the day of the 2021 awards show:

LA Times today full page ad pic.twitter.com/OpQ36bz8WH

— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) February 28, 2021

Desperate to escape its pariah status, the HFPA has hired a "chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer."  But after the ratings disaster in late February, this was not enough.  Of course, the pre-COVID 2020 ceremony was hosted by Ricky Gervais, who once again trashed the pretensions of Hollywood's wokest poseurs and garnered excellent ratings.  His opening monologues have actually been funny and pointed.

2020:

For those with most of an hour to devote, here is a supercut of his monologues since 2009:

Photo credit: Twitter.

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