RUSH: So did the Russians hack the Oscars? Should there be an investigation in the House? Something so ridiculous, so unacceptable, so un-Hollywood-like. Did the moguls of Hollywood have the courage to get out of bed today after such a major — you know, I wasn’t even gonna talk about it, and then I decided there’s some aspects of this that I just can’t in good conscience ignore.
Hey, folks. How was your weekend? Great to have you here. El Rushbo behind the Golden EIB Microphone, and the telephone number is 800-282-2882. If you want to send an email, do that: ElRushbo@eibnet.us.
So was the Oscar election stolen last night? I mean, really, who won? How do we really know? I mean, with so much fake out there now, and you can’t count on polling data, and you can’t count on election results. I mean, just listen to what the Democrats say. I mean, they told us first that La La Land won, and then they said, no, no, Moonlight won. And there’s rampant confusion everywhere.
And I would like to be the first to call for an investigation and an independent special prosecutor to look — they had millions of people around the world watching last night. Can you imagine if you are a La La Land fan, can you imagine what they did to you last night? You had everything invested in La La Land winning. It was gonna dominate your spirit and feelings of Hollywood and entertainment for the next year. And the cast shows up almost like Hillary showing up to do her acceptance speech and then somebody from an accountant firm pops up and says Warren Beatty blew it.
And how did Warren Beatty blow it? Well, I will explain that when we get to it. So then they had to take the La La Land cast — by the way, I didn’t see any of this as it happened. Somebody help me out, when they finally said that, no, the election was actually stolen by Moonlight, when the Moonlight gang came up there, did the La La Land cast and crew leave?
So both candidates in effect were on stage as both were announced as having won the Best Picture Oscar. Were they hugging each other? I mean, was the La La Land crew, the actors and producers, after having that Oscar taken away from them on live TV, did they smile about it? Was there good cheer? Was there understanding? Was there tolerance? And did they welcome the Moonlight crew to the stage? Did they stand up there together, or was it a cluster?
You saw it. I didn’t. Nobody in there saw it? Oh, we’re all flying blind here. Well, I’ll have to research this and find out. I’ve seen some still shots of Jimmy Kimmel looking clueless, but that’s not unusual. It’s hard to get much from the still shots. But let’s talk about the picture that they tell us won. How do we really know? How do we really know who won the Best Picture award? They’re telling us it’s Moonlight. Has anybody seen it?
Do you realize the number of actual moviegoers who’ve seen any of these nominees is such a small percentage that it’s not even worth mentioning? It’s like 60, 65% of moviegoers have not seen — I think some of them saw La La Land. I guess it did pretty well. Well, Moonlight is about a gay black man.
Now, remember, Hollywood took it on the chin last year. Remember, everybody was jumping in their chili claiming that it was all white all night. All the nominees and the only roles for African-Americans are drug-addled criminals and gang leaders and so forth or servants, and they’re fed up with it. And then they’re fed up with no nominations for anything.
So Hollywood had to make it good last night. So they went for a twofer. They had a movie about a gay black guy. So what they did there, taking no chances whatsoever after the grief they got last year, they went for the twofer, two protected groups in one movie. I wonder if they were afraid that Hollywood might be — never mind. I’m not gonna talk about potential violence if one of the two didn’t happen.
But folks, this is great. It’s a circus. Hollywood could not have scripted a more ironic ending. After lecturing us all night on who should be president, after telling us all night how to run the country, after lecturing their number one fan base, middle America, which is where the vast majority of people are, after impugning them, making fun of them and laughing at ’em by making fun of the things they believe, these geniuses couldn’t even get their big moment done right, and that’s the award for the best movie of the year.
I wonder, will there be any recounts? Will any heads roll at Pricewaterhouse whatever the new name of that firm is? I mean, you had a Latino woman and an Irish male representing — well, this is how the left looks at things. They look at gender. They look at ethnicity to make sure that you’re covering all your politically correct bases. At any rate, ratings were down. And here’s what supposedly happened.
Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are out there, and it’s their job to announce the winner of the Best Picture. And Warren Beatty had the envelope that announced Emma Stone as Best Actress. Now, nobody knows why that happened yet. At least if they do I haven’t run into it. So Warren Beatty goes out there with an incorrect ballot, and so he opens the ballot, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.
Now, why wouldn’t he — okay, you’re out there to present Best Picture, best movie, movie of the year, whatever. You open the envelope, and the card says the Oscar goes to the woman, actress in a leading role, Emma Stone, whatever movie she was in. Why do you pass that off to Faye Dunaway? Because your mind freezes, ’cause you’re an actor and whatever’s on the card, whatever’s in the script is what you read. You’re not able to stop and think because you don’t think. You’re an actor. You think you know everything, but you never think. (interruption) Well, he didn’t have any ability to improvise. The improvisation was tossing it off to Faye Dunaway which makes about as much sense as tossing it off to a frog.
So Faye Dunaway, they look at this and what they concluded was, okay, well, it’s the Best Actress winner envelope, but the movie there is La La Land, so they say, we’ll take a chance, we’ll take a flier here, and Faye Dunaway says, “It’s La La Land.” And then the La La Land people show up and they start accepting their accolades, and it takes about a minute, and then somebody shows up, some bald-headed guy, “No, no, no, no, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, the best movie is Moonlight,” and he holds up the actual ballot or card, whatever, from inside the correct envelope, and the camera had to zoom in on it.
I think we have audio of this. We do. Start with number 23. This is Warren Beatty as he opens — now, remember, when he’s opening this envelope, it’s the Best Actress envelope. It’s not the Best Picture. And at that moment it’s freeze city.
BEATTY: Well, I think that it could be said that our goal in politics is the same as our goal in art, and that’s to get to the truth. That’s like in the movies we honor tonight that not only entertain us and move us, they show us the increasing diversity in our community —
RUSH: Meaningless.
BEATTY: — and a respect for diversity and freedom all over the world.
RUSH: Meaningless.
BEATTY: And the Academy Award —
RUSH: Freeze.
BEATTY: — for Best Picture —
DUNAWAY: You’re impossible. Come on. La La Land.
RUSH: All right. So he froze there. You heard him freeze because he had the card for Emma Stone, Best Actress. All this talk about diversity and ethnicity and freedom and communities and moving us and all this gibberish that these people think matters. So the La La Land crew happily shows up feeling just like Hillary Clinton no doubt did at 9 p.m. on election night, and then, and then, and then…
JORDAN HOROWITZ: There’s a mistake!
CROWD: (silence)
JORDAN HOROWITZ: Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture.
CROWD: (gasps and a smattering of applause)
MARC PLATT: Moonlight won. This is not a joke. I’m afraid they read the wrong thing. … This is not a joke. Moonlight has won Best Picture.
CROWD: (applause)
MARC PLATT: Moonlight. Best Picture.
KIMMEL: Personally, I blame Steve Harvey for this. I would like to see you get an Oscar anyway. Why can’t we just give out a bunch of them?
JORDAN HOROWITZ: I’m gonna be happy really proud to hand this to my best friends at Moonlight.
KIMMEL: That’s nice of you.
CROWD: (applause)
KIMMELL: That’s very nice.
CROWD: (applause)
KIMMEL: Warren, what did you do?
CROWD: (nervous laughter)
BEATTY: (haltingly) I wanted to tell you what happened. I opened the envelope, and it said, “Emma Stone, La La Land.” That’s why I took such a long look at Faye and at you.
KIMMEL: Ohhh.
CROWD: (silence)
BEATTY: I wasn’t trying to be funny.
RUSH: Obviously!
BEATTY: (gasps)
RUSH: So that’s how it happens last night. What an ironic turn of events from the people telling us how to live and how to feel and how to think and who should win and who shouldn’t be elected, and telling us that there’s never any fraud in elections. And then they got tripped up by their own system. I think… I don’t know. I don’t know what long-term impact if any this has on Hollywood because I think Hollywood’s in big trouble. You know I think the business… I was reading this yesterday.
I’m not gonna stay with this much longer, folks, but stay with me. I read something. It doesn’t matter specifically, but it was all about Hollywood’s over as a business model, and just nobody knows it yet, just like the music business is not the way it was. Whatever happened to the music business, the same thing is on its way to happening to Hollywood and all about people being able to watch what they want to watch when without having to go to theaters and be willing to pay for it and so forth.
And everybody in Hollywood is trying to hold on to this old business model where theaters are the primary distribution vehicle. That’s done and over with, just that nobody knows it yet. So they’re in some trouble. I think they’ve also got trouble, folks, because of who they are, because of their being leftists.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know, I was just looking here at the nominations voting process, at Oscars.org. You know what? These people do not have any voter ID laws. There are no voter ID laws for the Oscars. Anybody could vote. “Final Balloting Process. Finals voting is also conducted via online and paper ballots.” Hell, the Russians could hack either one of those, easily.
“During finals, all Oscar categories are on the ballot for voting members. After final ballots are tabulated, only two partners of PricewaterhouseCoopers know…” Well, the Russians could hack them, too. You know, this mystery is deepening, because it turns out that Emma Stone — who won the Oscar for Best Actress for La La Land — had the card. She had it. There’s no way Beatty could… Well, not true. Do you know that there are two sets of ballots?
These PricewaterhouseCoopers people come out each having a briefcase. In case one of them is a bomb and blows up, they have the results in a second briefcase. Identical envelopes, identical briefcases, identical results, supposedly. So there’s two envelopes for every category that gets an Oscar. Emma Stone had one, so it’s possible Beatty could have had his, but somebody had to give it to him. Why don’t they just give everybody an Oscar? Moonlight and La La Land. Just give ’em all Oscars and soothe any hurt feelings.