Fade to Gray: Those snowflake Republicans

Mention the word snowflake and politics and people automatically assume you are talking about a young, liberal democrat.

Someone who can’t take a joke and needs to retreat to their “safe space” when confronted with some inconvenient truth. Sometimes that is true but not always. One of the reasons people tell me they like this column is because, as the home plate umpire used to say, “I calls em like I sees em kid.”

So let’s take a break from beating up on the Betos and Bernies and focus our mild wrath on those sitting on the right side of the fence.

My feeling is this; if you are going to criticize Democrats for being too sensitive then you’d better have a tough skin and not react the same way that you are constantly condemning. Case in point, the Oscars which were held one week ago tonight.

Now, I don’t usually watch the Academy Awards and not because they’ve become too political (which they have) or I find the rich celebrity speeches annoying (which they often are). No, I don’t watch them because it always turns out when I look at the list of movies up for awards I’ve usually only seen one or two of them.

It’s hard to get excited about an awards show when you haven’t seen 90% of the stuff they are talking about.

It wasn’t always this way. Back when I was a wee lad I’d see about twenty films a year and quite often when they were about to hand out the Oscar to “best picture” I had seen four out of five of them. Today, they nominate eight or nine films and if I’m lucky I’ve seen even one.

That was true this year with the highly (in my opinion) overrated “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” I found it too long and too weird, although the one shining spot was Brad Pitt who is good in everything. Have you seen “Money Ball” or “World War Z?” Hello? Brilliant.

That was the only film of the bunch I had seen, so I had little interest in sitting through a three hours of actors virtue signaling each other in gowns that cost more than your mortgage.

Which leads me back to the republican snowflakes, the point of this column. I did click by the Oscars at the beginning at exactly the moment Brad Pitt won. His short speech opened with him expressing his displeasure with how the senate ran the impeachment proceedings. I said out loud to the TV, “Ah, too bad.

I thought he’d keep politics out of it.” My wife, half paying attention said curtly, “Hon, he just won an Academy Award; I think he can say whatever he wants.” And you know what? She’s right.

The same people on the right who complain, daily, about snowflakes on the left, could not shut up about every single thing in the Oscars that annoyed them. The actress in the cape with the names of female directors sewn in, Chris Rock’s joke about the cops, the guy who played the Joker droning on about cows and God knows what else.

Here’s the deal; it’s their moment in the sun so they can say what they want. If Hollywood annoys you that much, turn the channel like I did, watching “Molly’s Game” for a third time. A very entertaining movie by the way.

My point is you can’t yell about people being snowflakes on the left if you are throwing a fit over someone’s dress on the red carpet. Just don’t watch. Problem solved.

I saw one friend of mine on social media denounce Brad Pitt saying he wouldn’t watch his films ever again. Oh please, go to bed without your supper. I wasn’t crazy about his John Bolton comment in his speech but I don’t love “A River Runs Through it” or “Legends of the Fall” any less because Brad got a smidge political.

As my wife said, it’s his moment so he gets to say what he wants.

Before I close let me mention something about watching movies and television. Last Saturday, for a few hours, cable TV went out through much of the northeast. Watching people’s reactions, you would have thought we’d all run out of fresh drinking water in the desert in mid-July. Good grief Charlie Brown, are we this addicted to television?

Some of us over 50 years old remember a time when turning on the TV meant a choice of just three channels and one of them had Captain Kangaroo on trying to duck ping pong balls.

Next time the cable goes out, treat it like a gift and get out of the house. Go take a walk and talk to the birds. If they talk back you probably should go see a psychiatrist but you get my point, go enjoy nature. We spend too much time staring at that dumb box and not enough time enjoying life.

Plus, if you go outside in February you might see real snowflakes. You know, the kind that don’t melt when Brad Pitt gives a 45 second speech.