Monday, February 27, 2017

Oscars "monumental gaffe" really not a big deal

Well, the world is still whittering and twittering about the "monumental gaffe" at the end of the Oscars, when La La Land was initially announced winner by mistake in the Best Picture category, rather than the actual (and admittedly much more deserving) winner, Moonlight.
Yes, it was a mistake, but it was corrected. Price Waterhouse Coopers has accepted responsibility, and the two accountants involved have even been sacked. No-one died. No black artists were cruelly overlooked. There was no grand conspiracy. The La La Land people weren't even that upset. In fact, it wasn't really that big a deal. And that's even presupposing that the Oscars are actually important per se (I'm sorry, but they're not).
And I don't actually do Twitter - never seen much point in it - but I suppose it was to be expected: there is an #OscarsSoBlack hashtag out there, fielding a rather strange mixture of complaints from disgruntled white guys, congratulations from happy and earnest black people, and a bunch of largely even-tempered suggestions that perhaps the large number of black nominations and winners this year is, in good part, just a politically correct knee-jerk reaction to the #OscarsSoWhite outcry last year (which, even giving credit where credit is due, is probably not far from the truth).
Anyway, can we now get over it, please, and focus on what's actually important in the world.

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