Panahi: Move over Oscars, this virtue-signalling circle jerk beats all
Comedy great Ricky Gervais did warn overindulged, out-of-touch celebrities to stay in their lane at awards shows, but alas, the lesson fell on deaf ears at this week's Grammys.
What should've been a celebration of the music industry turned into a virtue-signalling circle jerk. The most asinine comments were met with applause and standing ovations, including Billie Eilish's absurdly contradictory comment that: "No one is illegal on stolen land."
You can't have it both ways, Billie. You can't advocate for open borders and simultaneously claim Americans are living on stolen land. And then there's the little issue of Eilish owning multiple multimillion-dollar properties built on the very "stolen land" she decries.
Turns out Eilish did not consult with members of the Tongva tribe who claim her LA mansion is on their "ancestral land." A spokesperson for the tribe said: "As the First People of the greater Los Angeles basin, we do understand that her home is situated in our ancestral land ... Eilish has not contacted our tribe directly regarding her property."
Never mind contacting, if Eilish genuinely believes she is on stolen land, then it's incumbent upon her to turn over the keys, and the title, to the rightful owners. Either your words mean something or you're just mouthing empty platitudes to feel morally superior.
Eilish was not alone in indulging in ignorant political posturing. Bad Bunny, Kehlani, Shaboozey, and Grammys host Trevor Noah were among the celebs who felt the need to lecture the masses. All of them seemed incapable of differentiating between illegal and legal migrants, a rather important point.
If only they'd listened to Gervais' sage words of advice at the 2020 Golden Globes, where he urged celebs to resist making a political speech if they won. "You're in no position to lecture the public about anything, you know nothing about the real world," he said. "Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg."
But celebrities at the Grammys were hellbent on delivering smug sermons designed to elicit applause from their like-minded brethren. There was no nuance, no debate, no diversity of thought, just performative caring and vacuous statements. Rita Panahi, Columnist and Sky News host
Rita is a senior columnist at Herald Sun and Sky News Australia anchor of The Rita Panahi Show and co-anchor of top-rating Sunday morning discussion program Outsiders. Born in America, Rita spent much of her childhood in Iran before her family moved to Australia as refugees. She holds a Master of Business, with a career spanning more than two decades, first within the banking sector and the past ten years as a journalist and columnist.
