No Trump-Bashing or Mention of #MeToo Movement at 2018 Emmys

Words by Tahnyl Jordan

The first Emmy Awards during the #MeToo time was amazing in one respect: It was absolutely useless.

It’s been 10 days since Les Moonves, CEO of CBS, was forced to step down after numerous reports of sexual misconduct. He was uninvited from the occasion only 24 hours before it started. News broke on Page Six — during the show — that his wife, Julie Chen, left her job as co-host of CBS’s, The Talk.

Soon-Yi Previn did her first interview with New York magazine, in a piece that went live on Sunday protecting Woody Allen, who was also accused of sexual misconduct.

Moonves was to TV what Harvey Weinstein was to Independent films. However Moonves, #MeToo, and the whole plague of sexual abuse has been ignored completely in Hollywood — a choice defended by Colin Jost, co-host with his Saturday Night Live castmate Michael Che.

The two men were picked to host this year’s ceremony were also tone deaf.

Jost disclosed to Vanity Fair a month ago that the arrangement was to depoliticize this years show — and in reality, there was next to no Trump-bashing. In any case, Jost was clearly tone deaf AF when he told the following joke. “People are going to be desperate to give men a chance, finally. It’ll probably be #HeToo by then.”

Dave Chappelle, beneficiary to Richard Pryor and George Carlin, said this before showing: “This is a wonderful business, we make a huge number of dollars, and we get trophies every now and then.” He didn’t state it with a wink.

Rather, the academy picked diversity as the night’s subject, recognizing there’s a very long way to go. As The Atlantic revealed, starting at 2016, 90 percent of showrunners were white and 80 percent were male.

It is an issue. Yet, a significantly bigger one is an industry that, on its greatest night, declines to recognize the hopelessness it has created and thinks everybody watching at home is as yet innocent enough to trust the lie.